Visakhapatnam is where the future is. Not just for Andhra Pradesh, but for India as a whole. As New Delhi hosts its first AI Summit, the city being transformed to play the part of India's AI hub is the east coast city of Visakhapatnam.
In Visakhapatnam, India is building its first large-scale AI Data City, backed by $175 billion in agreements across 760 projects. Spread across 100 km radius, the project aims to create a full-spectrum AI ecosystem within 5-10 years.
This is big news as we are now in the era of fourth industrial revolution trigerred by artificial intelligence, automation and data supremacy. Already India has made its mark by standing third in the AI race, after China in second spot and the US in the top spot. The same was stated by the Stanford Institute Center For Hunan-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
Though India has 20% of the talent pool, it lacked hyper scale infrastructure. This latest project - AI Data City in Vizag - will fill the gap. The city will hold 6 GW of data capacity, hyperscale data centers, GPU clusters and AI chip ecosystem, server manufacturing, renewable-powered infrastructure and advanced cooling systems using sea and river waters, according to various media sources.
Google, Reliance, Microsoft and Sify Technologies are the big players in the arena are the early birds that decided to invest in Vizag. Now the question arises, why Vizag? Well, Vizag has direct sub-marine cable connectivity to Singapore, lower latency for workloads, cheap access to power and renewable energy and cost advantages over saturated metros like Mumbai, Delhi or even Bengaluru.
The AI Data City will prevent brain drain, a problem India faced for decades, create high-skilled, high paying jobs, strengthen India's AI sovereignty and position India as a counter power to US and Chinese AI infrastructure.
AI Data City in Vizag is set to lead India to play its role on world stage in the big tech domain.