Google’s ambitious AI hub in Andhra Pradesh, initially announced as a $15bn project with 1GW capacity, now approved for over 2.5GW, has sparked criticism over rapid approval, environmental impacts, and displacement of local communities.
Google’s planned artificial intelligence infrastructure in Andhra Pradesh is emerging as a test case for how far India is willing to go to attract hyperscale investment. What was presented publicly in October 2025 as a $15bn project with 1GW of capacity now appears, according to environmental clearance papers seen by The Guardian and reported by The Next Web, to have state approval for 2.51GW, more than twice the figure initially disclosed. That scale places the project in a different category entirely, with The Guardian comparing the approved load to the output of two large nuclear reactors and to more than 30% of the state’s annual electricity consumption.
The project is being developed in Visakhapatnam, with Google working alongside AdaniConneX and Airtel. According to the reports, Andhra Pradesh granted environmental clearance in just nine days and did so without a public hearing, a pace that has fuelled criticism over transparency and due process. The state has defended the deal as part of its digital development strategy, while offering Google significant incentives over 20 years, including subsidies, land, energy and water concessions that have been estimated at about Rs220bn, or roughly $2.2bn.
The sharpest criticism has come from Tarluvada, one of the villages affected by the build-out. The Guardian reported that 520 families were required to give back land previously allocated to them by the government around two decades ago, and that Adani security personnel erected fences in April and blocked access to plots that had been cultivated for years. Several Dalit farmers say they have received compensation but still lack the replacement land and promised jobs that were meant to soften the blow. One farmer, P. Venkat Rao, told The Guardian: “Soy agricultor; sin mi tierra no soy nada.”
The state insists there was no forced expropriation and that the payments made were fair. Google has said the facility will use air cooling rather than water cooling, which it says will limit pressure on local water supplies, and that the project will create thousands of jobs in the region. Yet The Guardian also reported that the site lies close to a protected forest, a drinking-water reservoir and a wildlife sanctuary, which has sharpened concern about the environmental consequences of placing such a large energy-intensive asset in a sensitive area. In parallel, the Human Rights Forum has filed three petitions before India’s National Green Tribunal, with a separate case under way in the Andhra Pradesh High Court.
The controversy reflects a wider pattern now visible across the AI build-out: enormous computing projects need land, power and, often, water, and the promised economic benefits do not always reach local communities at the pace or scale advertised. In the Andhra Pradesh case, the legal and political issue is not only the size of Google’s infrastructure, but the speed with which the approvals were granted and the limited room given to those most directly affected. If the project proceeds as planned, it will stand as one of the clearest examples yet of the physical and social cost of the AI industry’s expansion.
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