Google explores India investments in AI infra, server and drone manufacturing

Bengaluru: Google is exploring investments in India spanning artificial intelligence infrastructure as well as the manufacturing of servers and drones, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Friday. This, signalling a possible expansion of the tech giant’s ambitions in the country beyond cloud and startup programmes.

“Google is exploring investments in India across AI infrastructure and the manufacturing of servers and drones,” Vaishnaw said in a post on X after a meeting with Google executives.

The reference to manufacturing is notable because Google’s India announcements have largely focused on cloud, startup ecosystem support and AI skilling initiatives, rather than local hardware manufacturing exploration.

The development comes months after Google Cloud announced what it described as its largest India investment to date, a proposed $15-billion investment over 2026-2030 to establish its first AI hub in India at Visakhapatnam. The project includes gigawatt-scale data centre operations, expanded fibre infrastructure and AI compute capacity.

In recent months, Google has also stepped up its India AI ecosystem push through multiple accelerator and startup initiatives focused on artificial intelligence.

Separately, Google opened applications for the third cohort of Google Play Accelerator India, an equity-free programme for AI-powered apps and game startups.

Last month, Google for Startups Accelerator India invited applications from AI-first startups working in areas including agentic AI, multimodal AI, sovereign AI and “physical AI”, covering robotics and manufacturing applications. The programme also offered access to cloud TPUs and AI infrastructure.

Google has additionally backed Indian AI startups through partnerships such as Accel Atoms, where selected companies received funding support, compute credits and access to Google Cloud, Gemini and DeepMind infrastructure.