The Blackstone-backed hyperscale operator is betting big on India's AI infrastructure boom, targeting more than 5 GW of capacity across the country.
AirTrunk, one of Asia-Pacific’s largest hyperscale data center operators, just announced it will pour over $30 billion into India by 2030. The goal: building more than 5 gigawatts of AI-ready data center capacity across multiple states and union territories.
That’s roughly INR 3,000 billion, making it one of the single largest foreign commitments to digital infrastructure India has ever seen.
The deal pipeline is already stacking up #
AirTrunk entered the Indian market just two months ago, acquiring Lumina CloudInfra in April 2026. That deal gave the company an initial pipeline of 600 megawatts spread across Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad.
Then on June 1, 2026, AirTrunk signed a letter of intent for a $21 billion, 3 GW data center campus in the Raigad Pen Growth Centre of Maharashtra, near Mumbai. That single project accounts for the majority of the company’s total India commitment.
The June 5 announcement ties all of this together into a broader national strategy. CEO Robin Khuda pointed to India’s government initiatives, specifically Digital India and the IndiaAI Mission, as key factors driving the decision. He also cited the country’s deep talent pool and growing renewable energy resources as making India a “cornerstone” of AirTrunk’s global strategy.
Who is AirTrunk, and who’s backing this #
AirTrunk was founded in 2015 by Robin Khuda and has since grown into a dominant hyperscale data center platform across the Asia-Pacific region. In 2024, Blackstone and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) acquired AirTrunk for A$24 billion, marking the largest data center transaction globally at that time.
The initiative is also expected to generate tens of thousands of jobs and support local supply chains.
What this means for investors #
India’s data center market has been heating up for years, but commitments of this magnitude signal a new phase entirely. India offers a combination that’s hard to match: a massive domestic market for digital services, competitive labor costs for construction and operations, favorable government policy, and increasingly abundant renewable energy.
The competitive implications are also worth watching. AirTrunk’s aggressive entry puts pressure on existing Indian data center operators like Adani Group’s AdaniConneX, Reliance’s Jio, and other domestic players who have been building out their own capacity.
The risk side of this equation isn’t trivial, though. Building 5 GW of capacity in four years is extraordinarily ambitious. Power grid infrastructure, water availability for cooling, land acquisition, and regulatory approvals all present potential bottlenecks.
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