Amazon will invest an additional 13 billion dollars to expand Amazon Web Services data centre capacity in India, in the cities of Mumbai and Hyderabad. According to CNA International, the announcement marks a further step in the company's push to build out cloud infrastructure in the country.
The fresh spending builds on an earlier commitment of 35 billion dollars. Together, the two pledges bring Amazon's total planned investment in its India data centre operations to a grand 48 billion dollars between this year and 2030.
The expansion comes as Amazon, along with other United States technology firms, has been pouring billions of dollars into India for artificial intelligence and data centres. The country has become a key target for companies racing to add computing capacity.
India, the world's most populous nation, has more than a billion internet users, a scale that makes it an attractive market for cloud and digital services. That vast user base underpins much of the appetite among global firms to set up infrastructure there.
Amazon is not alone in committing large sums. According to the report, Google is committing 15 billion dollars over the next five years, part of a broader wave of investment by major technology companies in the country's digital backbone.
Analysts see artificial intelligence spending remaining the biggest driver of earnings in the region. One analyst noted that while it is unclear which of the hyperscalers will ultimately win, the suppliers along the AI value chain are set to capture much of the money flowing into the sector.
According to the same analysis, AI spending is expected to reach around 990 billion dollars next year, substantially higher than this year. That projected surge in outlays is expected to benefit the hardware and infrastructure that underpin the expansion of data centres such as those Amazon is building in India.