India is continuing to woo global companies to set up AI datacenters in the country.
The latest is AirTrunk, a Blackstone-backed Australian data centre operator, which has announced plans to invest over $30 billion to build more than 5 gigawatts of digital infrastructure capacity in India by 2030. The investment — co-backed by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) — ranks among the largest digital infrastructure commitments ever announced in the country.
India’s datacenter market is heating up fast. OpenAI has been scouting for a 1GW facility, and the broader AI infrastructure race has global hyperscalers lining up to plant flags in the country. Google too is building a new datacenter in Vishakapatnam. AirTrunk’s $30 billion pledge puts it near the top of the pile.
What Is AirTrunk?
AirTrunk is one of Asia-Pacific’s largest hyperscale data centre operators. Founded in Sydney in 2015, the company built its reputation on delivering large-scale, power-dense data centres for cloud and AI workloads. It currently operates campuses across Australia, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.
The company entered India through its acquisition of Lumina CloudInfra in April 2026, which gave it an immediate development pipeline of 600 megawatts spread across Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad. AirTrunk’s model has been to go where hyperscale demand is heading before the crowd arrives, build at scale, and build fast.
In September 2024, Blackstone — the world’s largest alternative asset manager — acquired AirTrunk in a A$24 billion (approximately $16 billion) transaction, at the time the largest data centre deal ever globally and the biggest private equity deal in Australia that year. Macquarie Asset Management and PSP Investments, who had held the majority of the company, sold their stakes. The acquisition gave Blackstone one of the most important assets in the Asia-Pacific digital infrastructure space.
The India Plan
AirTrunk’s India ambitions come in two parts. The company has already signed a letter of intent for land allotment at Maharashtra’s Raigad Penn Growth Centre, near Mumbai, for a $21 billion, 3GW facility. Alongside that, the broader $30 billion program announced this week targets over 5GW of capacity across multiple states and union territories by the end of the decade.
To put the scale in context: India’s installed data centre capacity stood at roughly 1.5GW in 2025, and is projected to reach around 10GW by 2030. AirTrunk alone is targeting half of that growth.
The investment is expected to generate tens of thousands of jobs across development, construction, and operations, while also drawing in domestic supply chain and business activity.
Robin Khuda: The Man Behind AirTrunk
Robin Khuda’s story is one of the more remarkable in the global tech industry. He was born in Bangladesh and moved to Australia at 18 to continue his accountancy training. He spent years working his way through Australia’s telecoms and cloud sector — stints at PIPE Networks, NextDC, Fujitsu, SingTel Optus, and Cheung Kong Communications Group — before founding AirTrunk in Sydney in 2015.
The early years were rough. Khuda has spoken publicly about dipping into his personal pension savings to keep the company afloat in its early days and coming close to seeking insolvency advice. His conviction that demand for cloud and data storage would be insatiable eventually proved right. By 2020, Macquarie had acquired an 88% stake valuing the company at A$3 billion. Four years later, Blackstone paid A$24 billion — an eightfold increase — in what became the biggest private equity deal of 2024.
Khuda retained a stake in the company and stayed on as CEO. His net worth following the Blackstone deal was estimated at around $667 million. In 2025, he donated A$100 million to the University of Sydney to fund a Women in STEM program — the largest philanthropic gift the university had ever received — and was named to Forbes Asia’s Heroes of Philanthropy list.
He is now driving AirTrunk’s global expansion with India as the centrepiece.
Why India, Why Now
During his government engagement tour in India this week, Khuda met with central government representatives as well as state ministers in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. The discussions covered power access, renewable energy sourcing, water supply, and streamlined approvals — the standard checklist for anyone looking to build at datacenter scale in India.
India’s policy environment has made it more attractive for exactly this kind of capital. The IndiaAI Mission carries over Rs 10,000 crore ($1.2 billion) in funding, while the India Semiconductor Mission is backed by Rs 76,000 crore ($9 billion). Together, they signal a government that is serious about building the underlying infrastructure for an AI economy — and willing to put money behind it.
India is also outpacing much of the world in AI adoption, with a massive and growing base of mobile users, cloud adoption accelerating, and data sovereignty requirements creating demand for local infrastructure. For a company like AirTrunk, which looks for markets ahead of the curve, India is a natural next move.
“Capital is mobile, and India is creating the conditions for it to thrive,” Khuda said in a statement. “India is taking a top-down approach to AI with clear government-led initiatives, a world-class talent pool and massive availability of renewable energy.”
He added that after his discussions with government leaders, AirTrunk was looking to “double down” on its India commitment.
The announcement also follows broader momentum in India’s datacenter sector. The market, valued at $9.79 billion in 2025, is projected to more than double to over $21 billion by 2031. With AirTrunk’s scale of ambition, India may be getting its most consequential bet on that trajectory yet.