New Delhi, Oct. 15 -- US-based Google will invest $15 billion over five years to set up an artificial intelligence (AI) hub in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, its CEO Sundar Pichai has said. With its gigawatt-scale compute capacity, subsea gateway and energy supply plan, this mega facility is expected to become Google's biggest AI hub outside the US.

Across the world, there's a rush to set up massive data centres to do the back-office work needed by AI tools. This is energy-intensive, so it's reassuring that Google reportedly has a clean supply blueprint.

The capital inflows it will result in are especially welcome, given India's need to keep net foreign direct investment flows positive. It will generate jobs by virtue of the spending in...