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Starting small with $37m and maybe 50MW but reckons full-stack service plan can succeed

Indian tech services giant and retro software house HCL has decided to get into the AI datacenter business.

The company yesterday revealed its plan in an announcement [PDF] released alongside its Q1 results, which included news of three-percent year-over-year revenue growth to $3.65 billion and 20 percent growth in net income which reached $488 million.

CEO C. Vijayakumar also pointed to 62 percent year-over-year revenue growth for a segment HCL calls “Advanced AI” that encompasses building its own AI platforms.

The CEO said HCL’s strategy is to “Benefit disproportionately from the AI-native and AI-amplified opportunities” because they “together represent the fastest growing pool of enterprise spend.”

The company has therefore decided to get into the datacenter business and has found ₹3,500 crore ($36.5 million) to put toward facilities it says have “potential to scale to 50MW of capacity.”

That’s not a vast facility – just one of Meta’s datacenters will host 50GW of kit – but Vijayakumar said HCL can make it relevant by using its existing software to offer “full-stack” infrastructure.

“The biggest opportunity is not to rent AI, but to own the full stack,” the CEO said. “The datacenters that compute the models built to address client-specific needs.”

“This is a business which is shifting from physical infrastructure to higher value AI-ready solutions,” he added. “We will create full-stack offerings by combining our capabilities across AI datacenter design, DevOps, and cloud operations, as well as a software portfolio with our new datacenter business.”

HCL’s focus appears to be on Indian customers, as Vijayakumar said the datacenter investment will “position us as a key enabler of India’s sovereign AI ecosystem, expanding our presence in the fastest-growing market among largest economies with differentiated offerings around sovereign cloud, secure AI, and managed AI infrastructure.”

The CEO said HCL is already “in advanced discussions with clients to ensure we start with certain level of committed consumption from day one.”

The company didn’t say where it will build its bit barns, when they might come online, or how it will secure energy supply – an important consideration given we yesterday reported on an effort to locate a datacenter in renewable-energy-rich Bhutan to serve Indian customers.

Vijayakumar also revealed that HCL booked $2.4 billion of new business in the quarter, a record. The CEO pointed to one of those deals as an exemplar of HCL’s AI smarts, as it will see the services company work with an unnamed Fortune 250 semiconductor equipment OEM “to accelerate AI-driven transformation across its semiconductor engineering and manufacturing value stream.” To make that happen, HCL will deploy SAP, integrate it with existing systems, and establish “an enterprise backbone for a future-ready, scalable, AI-led digital supply chain.”

Another new deal, struck earlier this month and therefore not included in the $2.4 billion of new deals won in the quarter ended June 30, will see HCL work with an unidentified “Europe-headquartered Fortune Global 50 firm as a technology partner to accelerate AI-led transformation and management of their digital workplace and enterprise networks.”

Numerous reports in Indian media identified the new client as Mercedes Benz, and suggest the automotive giant has moved its business to HCL from Infosys, which announces its quarterly results next week. ®