Like a magnet pulling invisible currents of capital and code, India is redrawing the map of the global AI infrastructure race.
A Tax-Free Lure for the World’s Cloud Giants
As countries compete to host the next wave of artificial intelligence infrastructure, India has unveiled a sweeping incentive to attract global cloud providers. In her annual budget speech on Sunday, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a tax holiday running through 2047 for foreign cloud firms that sell services outside India but operate those workloads from Indian data centers.
Revenues earned overseas would face effectively zero taxes, while services sold domestically would need to be routed through Indian-incorporated resellers and taxed locally. The budget also proposes a 15% cost-plus safe harbour for Indian data-center operators serving related foreign entities.
The move comes amid a global scramble by U.S. tech giants to expand data-center capacity for AI workloads. India, with its vast engineering talent pool and growing cloud demand, has positioned itself as a compelling alternative to saturated markets in the U.S., Europe, and parts of Asia. Google announced a $15 billion investment in October to build an AI hub and expand data centers, while Microsoft followed with plans to invest $17.5 billion by 2029. Amazon has also deepened its bet, lifting its total planned investment in India to about $75 billion by 2030.
Ambition Meets Infrastructure and Policy Trade-Offs
Domestic players are scaling up too. Digital Connexion, backed by Reliance Industries, Brookfield, and Digital Realty, plans to invest $11 billion by 2030 in a 1-gigawatt AI-focused data-center campus in Andhra Pradesh, while Adani Group has announced up to $5 billion in partnership with Google. Yet the expansion faces hurdles: patchy power supply, high electricity costs, and water scarcity could constrain growth and raise operating expenses.
“The announcements on data centers signal that they are being treated as a strategic business sector rather than just back-end infrastructure,” said Rohit Kumar of The Quantum Hub, while cautioning that execution challenges around power, land, and state clearances remain. Sagar Vishnoi of Future Shift Labs noted that allowing foreign firms to earn profits tax-free until 2047 represents a “strategic bet on global Big Tech,” even as India may nurture its own champions.
Beyond cloud computing, the budget reinforced India’s manufacturing ambitions. It expanded incentives for electronics components, launched a second phase of the India Semiconductor Mission, boosted support for rare-earth supply chains, and eased rules for cross-border e-commerce. Together, the measures underscore India’s push to anchor itself at the heart of AI, electronics, and critical minerals—an ambition whose success will hinge on whether infrastructure realities can keep pace with policy vision.
In the long game of the AI era, India has placed its wager—now the hard work begins to turn promise into power.
Summary
India has offered foreign cloud providers zero taxes until 2047 on overseas services run from Indian data centers, aiming to attract AI infrastructure investment. Backed by major commitments from Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, the push also includes incentives for electronics, semiconductors, and rare earths. However, power shortages, water stress, and policy trade-offs could test execution.
