Visakhapatnam, February 2026 —At the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivered a keynote that blended personal nostalgia with a massive industrial commitment. Pichai officially unveiled a $15 billion infrastructure investment in India, centered on transforming Visakhapatnam—a city he once passed through as a student—into a global AI hub.
The Transformation of Visakhapatnam
Pichai recalled his student days taking the Coromandel Express from Chennai to IIT Kharagpur, remembering Visakhapatnam as a quiet coastal city. Today, Google is turning that memory into a high-tech reality by establishing a full-stack AI hub in the city.
The facility will feature gigawatt-scale compute and serve as a key gateway for a new international subsea cable network. This infrastructure is part of the “America India Connect” initiative, designed to ensure that India’s digital backbone is capable of supporting the next generation of AI-driven industries.
Leapfrogging Legacy Gaps
Pichai described AI as the “biggest platform shift of our lifetimes,” arguing that it provides emerging economies like India the chance to “leapfrog” traditional technological hurdles. He highlighted several areas where this is already happening:
- Predictive Science: Google’s AlphaFold has solved a 50-year “grand challenge” in biology by predicting protein structures, a breakthrough that recently won a Nobel Prize and is now aiding 3 million researchers in developing new vaccines.
- Agricultural Protection: Last summer, the Indian government utilized Google’s AI models to send precise weather forecasts to millions of farmers, helping them safeguard their crops against erratic monsoons.
- Healthcare Access: In regions with a shortage of specialists, Google’s AI-powered tools are providing affordable diagnosis and treatment for thousands of citizens who previously lacked medical access.
The Digital Divide vs. The AI Divide
A central theme of Pichai’s address was the responsibility to ensure technology remains inclusive. “We cannot allow the digital divide to become an AI divide,” he warned. To prevent this, Google is investing heavily in connectivity and training, having already provided digital skills training to 100 million people globally.
The company is also launching a new Google AI Professional Certificate to help the workforce master AI tools, alongside developing SynthID to help journalists and fact-checkers verify the authenticity of digital content in an era of deepfakes.
The Future of Work: A Generation of Creators
Addressing fears of job displacement, Pichai noted that while AI will automate some roles, it will evolve others and create entirely new career paths. He compared the current shift to the rise of YouTube, noting that 20 years ago, a “professional YouTube creator” didn’t exist, whereas today there are millions.
Bottom Line
Sundar Pichai’s $15 billion bet marks a shift from India being a consumer of Google’s products to being the factory for its global AI infrastructure. By moving compute power and subsea cables to cities like Visakhapatnam, Google is ensuring that the “quiet coastal cities” of the past become the technological engines of India’s future.
