HCLTech and Sarvam to Build ₹14,257 Crore Sovereign AI Data Centre in Odisha

On 24 July 2026, HCLTech signed a memorandum of understanding with the Government of Odisha and the Bengaluru-based artificial-intelligence startup Sarvam to build a large AI data centre in Bhubaneswar. With a planned capital outlay of ₹14,257 crore — roughly $1.4 billion — the facility will be HCLTech's first data centre anywhere in the world, and one of the most substantial private commitments yet to India's drive for "sovereign" AI infrastructure that keeps sensitive data and compute inside the country.

An anchor for the Odisha Sovereign AI Park

The centre will come up at the upcoming Odisha Sovereign AI Park. The MoU was signed in the presence of Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, Electronics and IT Minister Dr Mukesh Mahaling, HCLTech Chairperson Roshni Nadar Malhotra, HCLTech Chief Executive and Managing Director C Vijayakumar, and Sarvam co-founder Pratyush Kumar. Alongside the data centre, HCLTech will also set up a global delivery centre (GDC) in the state, and the two facilities together are expected to create around 5,000 jobs. Operations are slated to begin by 2028.

Why "sovereign" AI matters here

The word "sovereign" is doing a lot of work in this announcement. As governments and regulated industries move workloads onto large language models, they increasingly want the underlying compute, the training data and the model weights to sit under domestic jurisdiction rather than on foreign hyperscale clouds. India has made sovereign AI a policy priority through the IndiaAI Mission, which is subsidising GPU access and backing home-grown foundation models.

Sarvam is central to that plan. The startup was selected by the IndiaAI Mission to build one of the country's first sovereign large language model ecosystems, and it has been releasing models trained specifically on Indian languages. Pairing Sarvam's models with HCLTech's infrastructure and services is the logic of the partnership: the data centre supplies the compute and security envelope, while Sarvam supplies the India-first intelligence that runs on top of it.

What each partner brings

HCLTech, one of India's largest IT services companies, is positioning the project as part of what it calls a "full-stack AI play" — combining data-centre infrastructure, engineering services and applications rather than renting capacity from others. The company said the facility will offer secure, scalable digital infrastructure to government bodies, research institutions, startups and enterprises.

"This is an important milestone in our full-stack AI play and will enable us to serve the large demand for sovereign AI solutions and unlock the scale of our strategic partnership with Sarvam," C Vijayakumar said. "Odisha offers a progressive policy environment backed by excellent infrastructure and we look forward to working with them in collaboration with Sarvam." The partners say the goal is to deliver sector-specific AI applications to public and private organisations and to extend multilingual, AI-based services to the "last mile" of citizens who do not speak English.

Odisha's bid to become a tech destination

For Odisha, the deal is a marquee win. The state, better known for mining and heavy industry, has been courting technology investment, and landing HCLTech's first-ever data centre alongside a fast-rising AI startup gives its Sovereign AI Park a credible anchor tenant. The presence of the Chief Minister and IT Minister at the signing underlines how important the government considers the project to its ambition of building a digital economy beyond the traditional hubs of Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune.

A data-centre supercycle

The HCLTech commitment lands amid a broader surge in AI data-centre construction across India. Global and domestic players alike have announced multi-billion-dollar facilities as demand for training and inference compute climbs, and industry analysts have forecast tens of billions of dollars in data-centre investment over the coming years. What distinguishes this project is its explicit sovereign framing and the tight coupling of infrastructure with an Indian model-builder, rather than a pure colocation or hyperscale play.

Execution risk remains. Large data centres are power-hungry and take years to build, and the 2028 operational target leaves room for the usual delays in land, grid connectivity and high-end GPU procurement. But as a statement of intent — that India wants not just to host AI workloads but to run its own models on its own soil — the HCLTech–Sarvam–Odisha partnership is one of the clearest signals so far in 2026.

Sources

• HCLTech announces AI Data Center in Bhubaneswar in partnership with Sarvam and Government of Odisha — HCLTech press release
• HCLTech, Sarvam to set up AI Data Center in Odisha with Rs 14,257 crore investment — The Tribune
• HCLTech to invest $1.4 billion in Odisha for its first AI data centre — Business Standard
• HCLTech to set up Rs 14,257 crore AI data centre in Odisha with Sarvam — Storyboard18