Officials note the Visakhapatnam region accounted for about a quarter of India’s foreign direct investment inflows in 2025, underscoring its strategic appeal for global capital.

Critics question the immediate employment impact and warn against overreliance on data-centre infrastructure, while Lokesh argues the benefits will exceed land costs and that execution will be rapid.

The project seeks to attract adjacent industries—server manufacturing and cooling technology—by offering land at a symbolic one cent per acre and integrating the ecosystem around data centres.

Incentives include land priced at one US cent per acre for major investors, aiming to attract servers, cooling equipment, and related components into a single, interconnected cluster.

Aiming for six gigawatts of data-centre capacity (three signed, three in the pipeline), the plan ties energy and water management to the Vizag hub, including using surplus Bay of Bengal water for cooling.

Lokesh frames the project as part of a broader industrial revolution, insisting it will create more jobs than it displaces and citing lessons from China on rapid poverty reduction and clustering.

Lokesh argues land giveaways and resource use are justified by expected job creation and economic benefits from a high-velocity industrial surge.

The plan references China’s industrial clustering approach as a model and emphasizes learning from it while pursuing fast execution.

The project is a core element of India’s broader AI strategy to narrow the gap with the US and China, aiming to attract foreign investment and position Visakhapatnam as a technology hub modeled after Cyberabad in Hyderabad.

Nara Lokesh, Andhra Pradesh’s IT minister, is spearheading the initiative and promoting Visakhapatnam as a cornerstone of the national AI drive.

India is proposing a massive data city centered in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, spanning roughly 100 kilometres to host extensive data-centre infrastructure and related industries as part of a national AI push.

Officials point to lessons from China and envision accelerated industrial clustering, with potential six 1.2 GW nuclear plants at Kovvada to support the data city’s energy backbone.