The Chatterjee Group Launches Cortex DC to Build 2 GW of AI-Ready Data Centre Capacity in India
The Chatterjee Group's new subsidiary Cortex DC plans to build 2 GW of AI-ready data centre capacity in India over about seven years for hyperscalers and AI workloads, with its first facility targeted within 18 months of construction starting.
Another large investor has joined the race to build India's AI infrastructure. The Chatterjee Group (TCG), the New York-headquartered private equity and industrial holding group founded by Purnendu Chatterjee in 1989, has set out plans through a new subsidiary, Cortex DC, to develop 2 GW of AI-ready data centre capacity across India. The plans were reported on 22–23 October 2026.
The plan
According to the company and press reports:
- Scale and timeline: 2 GW of capacity, to be built over roughly seven years.
- Customers: hyperscalers, cloud service providers and advanced AI workloads that need high-performance computing.
- First facility: targeted to be operational within 18 months of construction starting.
- Energy: the company plans to draw 51% of its power from green sources.
- Leadership: Rahul Sharma is CEO; the company says he has previously led the development of more than 200 MW of AI-ready data centre capacity. The supervisory board is chaired by Vinayak Pai.
Reports differ on how advanced the project is. One says Cortex DC has not yet finalised its locations; another describes site selection, power procurement and partner arrangements as already under way. The company has not named sites or disclosed an investment figure.
What the founders said
"The Industrial Age rested on steel and energy; the Intelligence Age will rest on compute," said Purnendu Chatterjee, TCG's founder and chairman, framing the venture as part of the group's long-term investment in knowledge-based businesses.
Sharma said Cortex DC "is being built in India for the globe, set up to serve both local and global customers."
Context: a crowded build-out
To put 2 GW in perspective, it is a scale that only a few operators in India have publicly targeted. Gigawatt-scale plans have become common in the past year as AI demand has pushed operators to think in terms of campuses rather than buildings. In October alone, Vultr and AMD announced a 20 MW AMD Instinct supercluster in Chennai, CapitaLand opened a liquid-cooled AI data centre in Chennai, and Neysa chose STT GDC's Noida 2 facility for a planned 9,000-GPU deployment.
India's draw is a mix of factors: fast-growing domestic demand, data-localisation rules for some sectors, the government's IndiaAI Mission buying GPU capacity from local providers, cheap renewable power in several states, and subsea cable landings in Mumbai and Chennai.
The constraints are just as real. AI halls need far more power per rack than traditional data centres, so access to reliable grid connections — and to round-the-clock clean power — has become the deciding factor in site selection. Cortex DC's 51% green target and its unresolved site list both point to that challenge.
Why it matters
For India, every new gigawatt-scale developer increases the odds that the compute behind Indian AI models and services will sit inside the country. It also brings capital into power, cooling and construction supply chains. The caution, as with most announcements in this space, is that the figures are long-range plans: Cortex DC's first meaningful milestone will be naming a site and breaking ground, which starts the 18-month clock on its first facility.
Sources
- Indian Infrastructure: Cortex DC advances plans to develop 2 GW of AI-ready data centre capacity across India — https://indianinfrastructure.com/2026/10/23/cortex-dc-advances-plans-to-develop-2-gw-of-ai-ready-data-centre-capacity-across-india/
- BW Businessworld: TCG's Cortex DC Plans 2 GW Of AI Data Centre Capacity In India — https://www.businessworld.in/article/tcg-s-cortex-dc-plans-2-gw-of-ai-data-centre-capacity-in-india-629858
- CXOToday: The Chatterjee Group's Cortex DC Advances Plans to Develop 2 GW of AI-Ready Data Centre Capacity — https://cxotoday.com/media-coverage/the-chatterjee-groups-cortex-dc-advances-plans-to-develop-2-gw-of-ai-ready-data-centre-capacity-across-india/
- Tech Observer: TCG launches Cortex DC to build 2 GW data centre capacity in India — https://techobserver.in/news/enterprise-it/data-center/tcg-cortex-dc-data-centre-india-2gw-330150/
- People Matters: TCG to foray into data centres, aims to set up 2GW capacity — https://www.peoplematters.in/news/business/tcg-to-foray-into-data-centres-aims-to-set-up-2gw-capacity-52903
- Cortex DC: About — https://tcgcortex.com/about