India's Adani seeks up to $5 billion investment in Google data center to join AI boom

Nov 28 (Reuters) - India's Adani Group plans to invest up to $5 billion in Alphabet-owned Google's GOOGL.O India AI data centre project, an executive said on Friday, as it seeks to cash in on booming demand for data capacity in the world's most populous nation.

In October, Google said it would invest $15 billion over five years to set up an artificial intelligence data centre in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, its biggest investment in India.

AI requires enormous computing power, pushing demand for specialised data centres that enable thousands of chips to be linked in clusters.

Adani Group CFO Jugeshinder Singh said the Google project could mean an investment of up to $5 billion for Adani Connex - a joint venture between Adani Enterprises ADEL.NS and private data centre operator EdgeConneX.

"It's not just Google, there are a lot of parties that would like to work with us, especially when the data centre capacity goes to gigawatt and higher," Singh told reporters on Friday.

Google has committed to spending about $85 billion this year to expand data centre capacity as tech companies invest heavily in infrastructure to meet the booming demand for AI services.

Indian billionaires Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani have also unveiled investments in building data centre capacity.

The data centre campus in the port city of Visakhapatnam will have an initial power capacity of 1 gigawatt.

($1 = 89.3660 Indian rupees)