CHENNAI: Chief Minister M K Stalin on Thursday launched what is said to be South India’s largest AI-ready data centre, developed by Sify Infinit Spaces Ltd, in the Siruseri SIPCOT IT Park. The facility is part of the over Rs 10,000-crore (USD 1.2 billion) cumulative investment planned by Sify over a five-year period.
Industries Minister T R B Rajaa, who was also part of the launch, said the inaugurated facility is the first of three towers that Sify plans to construct, with this initial tower developed at a cost of Rs 1,882 crore. “This facility is also the first in India to receive the NVIDIA DGX-Ready Data Centre certification, built from the ground up to power the next generation of AI workloads,” he said.
The MoU for the data centre was signed during the Global Investors Meet in January 2024. As this facility scales, it is expected to create over 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, according to Sify.
The CM later shared on social media, “This futuristic centre reinforces Tamil Nadu’s position as the preferred destination for global digital infrastructure.”
Designed as a large-scale digital facility, the data centre will eventually deliver up to 130 MW of power for IT operations—60% of which will be sourced from renewable energy such as wind and solar. It also features an open cable landing station, said to be the only one of its kind in India, integrated within the data centre campus. This is expected to significantly boost global connectivity and support high-volume applications.
“This isn’t just a data centre, it’s a strategic digital gateway,” said Raju Vegesna, chairman and managing director of Sify. “We’ve quadrupled our original commitment, with cumulative investments now exceeding Rs 10,000 crore.”
With the capacity to handle data speeds of up to 2 petabytes per second, the facility ranks among the region’s highest-capacity subsea gateways. (One petabyte equals about one million gigabytes, or roughly 500 billion pages of printed text.)
Speaking to reporters, Vegesna said Sify intends to expand its data centre footprint to Tier-II cities, including Coimbatore. “AI is not confined to large cities. The entire country is undergoing a transformation, and we are preparing for it. We currently operate data centres in six cities across the country and plan to open five to six new facilities annually,” he said.