Microsoft opens its largest India data center hub as AI race heats up

Microsoft on Thursday made its Hyderabad cloud region generally available, taking its India footprint to four cloud regions as enterprise AI adoption gathers pace.

The Hyderabad region comprises three availability zones and allows enterprises to run Microsoft Cloud workloads locally while meeting data residency, security and compliance requirements. The company said the facility is designed to support AI applications and mission-critical workloads at scale.

With cloud regions in Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Mumbai, Microsoft claims it has the country's largest hyperscale cloud presence. The company also operates two data centres in partnership with Jio. The Hyderabad facility forms part of the company's broader investment in India's AI infrastructure, which now totals $20.5 billion, including commitments announced in 2025.


The announcement comes at a time when enterprise AI adoption in India is seeing a surge. Microsoft says the Hyderabad region has seen early demand from customers across financial services, digital platforms and diversified enterprises, including Adani Group, Bajaj Finance, and HDFC Bank among others, who are using the infrastructure to strengthen business continuity, expand cloud capacity and support AI initiatives.

"The question we hear most often is: how do we move faster from experimenting with AI to creating durable business value with AI? That requires trusted infrastructure close to where data lives, teams work and decisions are made," Microsoft President, India & South Asia Puneet Chandok said in a statement. "The Microsoft India South Central datacenter region is a critical part of that foundation, backed by Microsoft's $20.5 billion investment commitment to India's cloud and AI future."

Industry researcher IDC expects India's public cloud services market to reach $45.7 billion by 2030, growing at an annual rate of 22.2%, while AI spending is projected to expand at nearly twice that pace.