AirTrunk, the Blackstone-backed Asia-Pacific hyperscale data-centre operator, will invest more than $30 billion in India by 2030 to build out 5 gigawatts of new capacity, the company announced on June 5. The pledge — roughly Rs 3 lakh crore at current exchange rates — ranks among the largest foreign digital-infrastructure commitments India has ever received, and it lands just one week after Google broke ground on its own $15 billion AI hub in Visakhapatnam.
The Deal Pipeline Behind the $30B
AirTrunk entered India just two months ago, acquiring Mumbai-headquartered Lumina CloudInfra in April 2026 for an initial 600MW pipeline across Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. On June 1, 2026 the company signed a letter of intent for a single $21 billion, 3GW campus in the Raigad Pen Growth Centre in Maharashtra — the project that consumes the majority of the $30B total. The June 5 announcement is the umbrella commitment that ties everything together into a national strategy.
| Total committed investment | $30 billion (₹3 lakh crore) |
| Target capacity by 2030 | 5 GW across multiple states and UTs |
| Largest single project | $21B / 3GW, Raigad Pen (Maharashtra) |
| Lumina CloudInfra acquisition | April 2026 — 600MW pipeline (Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad) |
| Backed by | Blackstone, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board |
| Original AirTrunk acquisition (2024) | $16 billion (Blackstone + CPP Investments) |
| Stated driver | Digital India, IndiaAI Mission, AI / cloud demand |
Why AirTrunk Picked India
CEO Robin Khuda, who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi the same day as the announcement, named three factors: India's government initiatives (Digital India, the IndiaAI Mission), its deep technical talent pool, and its growing renewable-energy resources. Modi posted on X that the proposal was "among the largest proposed investments in the country's digital infrastructure ecosystem." AirTrunk separately closed a record $1.2 billion green loan in March to expand its Tokyo campus beyond 300MW — but India is now explicitly the centre of gravity for new builds.
India Is Now a Hyperscale Hotspot
AirTrunk's announcement lands in the middle of the largest data-centre build cycle India has seen. CBRE's 2026 Asia Pacific Data Centre Trends & Outlook identified India and Malaysia as leading hyperscale hotspots, with Mumbai recording live capacity growth of 15–25 percent year-on-year in 2025. Google broke ground in late April on a $15 billion AI hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh — its largest investment in India — working with AdaniConneX and Nxtra by Airtel to deliver gigawatt-scale compute capacity. Reliance, Tata Communications, Yotta and CtrlS are all expanding in parallel. The runway is driven by cloud and AI demand from Indian enterprises plus the global hyperscalers using India as a back-office and engineering hub.
What This Means for India
Three things matter for Indian readers beyond the headline number. (1) Power and water: 5GW of compute is roughly the output of five large nuclear reactors. AirTrunk will be reliant on renewable power purchase agreements and on state-level electricity distribution; Raigad Pen is positioned near the West Coast cable landing stations. (2) Jobs and supply chain: Direct construction jobs, plus a long tail of Indian system integrators, mechanical and electrical contractors, and security operators. (3) IndiaAI Mission alignment: The IndiaAI compute grid is targeting domestic sovereign compute — the AirTrunk capacity is private, but it raises the bar on what public infrastructure has to match. The risk is that domestic startups get out-priced for capacity in their own country.
Sources: Reuters, Moneycontrol, Mingtiandi, AirTrunk press release, Cryptobriefing, CBRE 2026 Asia Pacific Data Centre Trends & Outlook
See also: PM Modi Launches Bharat Innovates 2026 in France — 120 India · US Inflation Hits 4.2% in May 2026 — Highest in Three Years.
Sources
- Bloomberg — bloomberg.com
- Reuters Business — reuters.com/business
- Voxlogue editorial research
