Microsoft’s largest data center project in India remains on schedule to go live by mid-2026, according to the tech giant's regional head. The expansion comes as part of a massive capital offensive to secure dominance in one of the world's fastest-growing markets for artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

Puneet Chandok, President of Microsoft India and South Asia, told that the company is experiencing "massive demand" across the country for its Azure cloud infrastructure and its $30-a-month Copilot 365 AI assistant. To sustain this momentum, Microsoft is heavily anchoring its Asian footprint in India, executing a colossal $17.5 billion investment strategy on top of a $3 billion funding round pledged at the start of 2025, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.

A central pillar of this investment is the upcoming mega-facility located in the southern technology hub of Hyderabad. While Chandok declined to reveal specific capacity metrics, he confirmed the facility would be Microsoft’s largest footprint in the country, noting that the company is moving "the fastest out of the gates" to deploy localized infrastructure.

The surging data capacity will primarily service an expanding roster of enterprise clients deploying Microsoft's AI tools at scale. Major Indian IT powerhouses, including Infosys, Cognizant, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), have aggressively integrated the technology, commanding roughly 50,000 Copilot licenses each.

Beyond acting as a consumer market, India has transformed into a core engineering engine for the tech giant. Chandok revealed that several of Microsoft's global AI features are being designed natively by its local workforce, which spans more than 22,000 employees across multiple Indian cities. However, this rapid innovation has triggered an intense "war for talent" as local demand for elite AI and machine learning engineers increasingly outpaces available supply.

News.Az 

By Aysel Mammadzada