India's data center sector just got a major cash infusion—and the world's biggest tech names are watching closely.
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) has committed up to ₹70 billion—roughly $741 million—to Indian data center operator CtrlS, betting on India's role in the global AI infrastructure buildout.
The deal: CPP Investments will acquire an 8.2% stake in CtrlS for ₹40 billion ($423 million) and co-develop hyperscale data center campuses with a ₹30 billion commitment ($317 million). The Canadian pension giant gets 48% of the joint venture; CtrlS keeps 52%.
CtrlS, founded in 2007 and headquartered in Hyderabad, operates 15-plus data centers across India. The company's expansion is riding demand from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Uber, which have all announced India investments recently as AI workloads grow globally.
"As one of the world's fastest-growing digital markets, India represents an important pillar of our global data center strategy," CPP Investments' global head of real assets Max Biagosch said in a statement.
This is not CPP's first investment in India. The Canadian pension fund has been investing there since 2009 and holds about $20 billion in net assets in the country, making it one of the largest foreign institutional investors.
The timing is urgent. Earlier this month, Blackstone-backed AirTrunk announced it would invest $30 billion into five gigawatts of Indian data center capacity by 2030. Meta also partnered with Reliance Industries on a 168-megawatt AI-enabled data center in Gujarat.
New Delhi is offering foreign cloud providers tax exemptions on overseas services through 2047, provided the work runs from Indian data centers. India wants to be the world's data center hub, and investors are moving to secure positions.
