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Google to Invest $15 bn in India, Build Largest AI Hub Outside US

Google says its data center will make India's Visakhapatnam a 'global connectivity hub'. Sergei GAPON / AFP
Google says its data center will make India's Visakhapatnam a 'global connectivity hub'. Sergei GAPON / AFP
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Google to Invest $15 bn in India, Build Largest AI Hub Outside US

Google says its data center will make India's Visakhapatnam a 'global connectivity hub'. Sergei GAPON / AFP
Google says its data center will make India's Visakhapatnam a 'global connectivity hub'. Sergei GAPON / AFP

Google said Tuesday it will invest $15 billion in India over the next five years, as it announced a giant data center and artificial intelligence base in the country.

"It is the largest AI hub that we are investing in anywhere outside of the US," Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said at a ceremony in New Delhi.

Demand for AI tools and solutions is surging among businesses and individuals in India, which is projected to have more than 900 million internet users by year's end, AFP said.

Kurian announced "capital investment of $15 billion" over the five years and a "gigawatt-scale AI hub in Visakhapatnam", a port city in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh.

Google plans for the center to scale to multiple gigawatts, he added, comparing the project to "a digital backbone connecting different parts of India together".

Globally, data centers are an area of phenomenal growth, fueled by the need to store massive amounts of digital data, and to train and run energy-intensive AI tools.

Google chief Sundar Pichai said on X that he had spoken to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the "landmark development".

"This hub combines gigawatt-scale compute capacity, a new international subsea gateway, and large-scale energy infrastructure," he wrote.

"Through it we will bring our industry-leading technology to enterprises and users in India, accelerating AI innovation and driving growth across the country."

'Data is the new oil'

India's Information Technology Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, thanked Google for the investment.

"This digital infrastructure will go a long way in meeting the goals of our India AI vision," he said.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu called it a "very happy day". The state's Technology Minister Nara Lokesh said on X that the deal followed "a year of intense discussions and relentless effort".

Lokesh, speaking at the announcement, said that "data is the new oil and data centers are the new refineries".

"This is about India playing an important role on the global landscape," he added.

Recently top American AI firms looking to court users in the world's fifth-largest economy have made a flurry of announcements about expanding into the country.

This month US startup Anthropic said it plans to open an office in India next year, with its chief executive Dario Amodei meeting Prime Minister Modi.

Modi, in a post on X, told Amodei that "India's vibrant tech ecosystem and talented youth are driving AI innovation", adding that he wanted to "harness AI for growth".

OpenAI has said it will open an India office later this year, with its chief Sam Altman noting that ChatGPT usage in the country had grown fourfold over the past year.

AI firm Perplexity also announced a major partnership in July with Indian telecom giant Airtel, offering the company's 360 million customers a free one-year Perplexity Pro subscription.

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Technology

Apple, Google Send New Round of Cyber Threat Notifications to Users Around World

The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken September 24, 2025. (Reuters)
The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken September 24, 2025. (Reuters)
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Apple, Google Send New Round of Cyber Threat Notifications to Users Around World

The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken September 24, 2025. (Reuters)
The Apple logo is seen in this illustration taken September 24, 2025. (Reuters)

Apple and Google have sent a new round of cyber threat notifications to users around the world, the companies said this week, announcing their latest effort to insulate customers against surveillance threats.

Apple and the Alphabet-owned Google are two of several tech companies that regularly issue warnings to users when they determine they may have been targeted by state-backed hackers.

Apple said the warnings were issued on Dec. 2 but gave few further details about the alleged hacking activity and did not address questions about the number of users targeted or say who was thought to be conducting the surveillance.

Apple said that "to date we have notified users in over 150 countries in total."

Apple's statement follows Google's Dec. 3 announcement that it was warning all known users targeted using Intellexa spyware, which it said spanned "several hundred accounts across various countries, including Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Angola, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, and Tajikistan."

Google said in its announcement that Intellexa, a cyber intelligence company that is sanctioned by the US government, was "evading restrictions and thriving."

Executives tied to Intellexa did not immediately return messages.

Previous waves of warnings have triggered headlines and prompted investigations by government bodies, including the European Union, whose senior officials have previously been targeted using spyware.

Threat notifications impose costs on cyber spies by alerting victims, said John Scott-Railton, a researcher with the Canadian digital watchdog group Citizen Lab.

He said they were "also often the first step in a string of investigations and discoveries that can lead to real accountability around spyware abuses."

Technology

AI Bubble to Be Short-lived, Rebound Stronger, NTT DATA Chief Says

FILE PHOTO: Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the words "Artificial Intelligence AI" in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the words "Artificial Intelligence AI" in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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AI Bubble to Be Short-lived, Rebound Stronger, NTT DATA Chief Says

FILE PHOTO: Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the words "Artificial Intelligence AI" in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the words "Artificial Intelligence AI" in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

A potential artificial intelligence bubble will deflate faster than past tech cycles but give way to an even stronger rebound as corporate adoption catches up with infrastructure spending, the head of Japanese IT company NTT DATA Inc. said.

Despite worries around supply chains, the direction of travel is clear, CEO Abhijit Dubey said in an interview with the Reuters Global Markets Forum.

"There is absolutely no doubt that in the medium- to long-term, AI is a massive secular trend," he said.

"Over the next 12 months, I think we're going to have a bit of a normalization ... It'll be a short-lived bubble, and (AI) will come out of it stronger."

With demand for compute still running ahead of supply, "supply chains are almost spoken for" over the next two to three years, he said. Pricing power is already tilting toward chipmakers and hyperscalers, mirroring their stretched valuations in public markets, he added.

AI has triggered the biggest technological shake-up since the advent of the internet, fueling trillions of dollars of investment and eye-watering equity gains. But it has caused shortages of memory chips, drawn regulatory scrutiny, and created growing unease over the future of work.

Dubey, who is also the firm's chief AI officer, said his company has begun rethinking recruitment strategies as AI reshapes labor markets.

"There will clearly be an impact ... Over a five- to 25-year horizon, there will likely be dislocation," he said. However, he added that NTT DATA continues to hire across locations.

Speakers at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York discussed how AI may upend work and job growth.

AI startup Writer Inc.'s CEO May Habib said customers are focused on slowing headcount growth.

"You close a customer, you get on the phone with the CEO to kick off the project, and it's like, 'Great, how soon can I whack 30% of my team?'," she said.

Still, a PwC survey of the global workforce released in November suggests the reality of generative AI usage has yet to match boardroom expectations.

Daily use of GenAI remains "significantly lower" than widely touted by executives, PwC said, even as workers with AI skills commanded an average wage premium of 56% — more than double last year's figure.

PwC also flagged a widening skills gap, with about half of non-managers reporting access to training resources, compared with roughly three-quarters of senior executives.

Technology

EU Launches Antitrust Probe into Meta over Use of AI in WhatsApp

FILE - Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
FILE - Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
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EU Launches Antitrust Probe into Meta over Use of AI in WhatsApp

FILE - Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
FILE - Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

Brussels has opened a new antitrust investigation into Meta Platforms over its rollout of artificial intelligence features in WhatsApp, the European Commission said on Thursday, reflecting rising scrutiny of Big Tech's use of generative AI.

The move, reported earlier by Reuters and the Financial Times, marks the latest action by European regulators against large technology firms as the bloc seeks to balance support for the sector with efforts to curb its expanding influence.

The European Commission opened the investigation into "Meta's new policy regarding AI providers' access to WhatsApp" after the California-based company integrated its Meta AI system into the messaging service earlier this year.

A WhatsApp spokesperson said that "the claims are baseless", adding that the emergence of chatbots on its platforms "puts a strain on our systems that they were not designed to support".

"Even still, the AI space is highly competitive and people have access to the services of their choice in any number of ways, including app stores, search engines, email services, partnership integrations, and operating systems."

Meta AI, a chatbot and virtual assistant, has been built into WhatsApp's interface since March 2025 across European markets.

Italy's antitrust watchdog opened a parallel investigation in July into allegations that Meta leveraged its market power by integrating an AI tool into WhatsApp. The probe was expanded in November to examine whether Meta further abused its dominance by blocking rival AI chatbots from the messaging platform.

The FT, citing officials, said that the EU probe will be conducted under traditional antitrust rules rather than the EU's Digital Markets Act, the bloc's landmark legislation currently used to scrutinize Amazon and Microsoft's cloud services for potential curbs.