Tech giant Meta is planning a major partnership with Sify for a 500 MW data center in the Visakhapatnam region. Sify will set up the facility at Paradesipalem, located around 25 km from Vizag along the Kolkata–Srikakulam highway.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, will invest in the Waterworth sub sea cable project, which will land on the Vizag shore at Sify’s landing station. Sify will handle the entire development of the data center, including all infrastructure up to the racks.
A data center houses racks that contain GPUs and TPUs used for advanced computing. These processors can be purchased or hired from companies like Nvidia. Sify will invest in the complete setup, including these racks.
Meta will be the end user, and further investment discussions between both companies are ongoing. Although an official announcement is awaited, this marks the first time Meta will lease large scale infrastructure in India for its AI and super intelligence operations.
Meta will also bring its multi billion dollar Waterworth undersea cable system to the shores of Mumbai and Vizag. Spanning nearly 50,000 km, Waterworth will be the world’s longest undersea cable system, connecting the US, Brazil, South Africa and India. It is expected to boost international bandwidth and reduce latency.
With Sify preparing for its Rs 3700 crore IPO, this partnership is likely to become its largest customer commitment to date. Sify and Google are also the first companies to support Andhra Pradesh’s goal of building 6GW data centers. While Google will set up a 1GW cluster, the AP government has allocated a 550 MW data center to Sify.
Sify’s first 50 MW data center will be established at Madhuravada. Overall, the company’s data center investment is estimated at Rs 15,266 crore.
