Inside the Huge NVIDIA Deal to Make India an AI Powerhouse

Construction giant Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has announced a proposed venture under the IndiaAI Mission to build sovereign, scalable gigawatt-scale NVIDIA AI factory infrastructure.

The initiative combines L&T’s engineering and execution strength with NVIDIA’s full AI stack, including GPUs, CPUs and Networking, to support large-scale workloads. The sovereign-by-design fabric allows critical data and AI models to be built, trained and deployed within India while remaining interoperable with global systems.

It is intended to serve domestic requirements and global hyperscalers looking to deploy AI capacity from India as a strategic hub. The venture aims to transition India from AI pilots to production-ready deployment across priority industrial sectors.

Providing capacity for next generation workloads

The venture plans to develop a gigawatt-scale AI datacentre factory to provide capacity for high-density, next-generation workloads.

Deployment includes scaling NVIDIA GPU clusters at L&T’s Chennai datacentre up to 30 MW, alongside a new 40 MW facility in Mumbai. The AI factory model delivers advanced services to sectors like manufacturing, energy and financial services, moving from experimentation to production-scale deployment.

By providing standardised, enterprise-grade AI capabilities, the model ensures predictable performance and security. This infrastructure will also enable L&T and its group companies to deploy live AI agents on a sovereign cloud, fostering a self-sustaining innovation hub and transforming industrial operations with agentic AI.

Fostering innovation through agentic ai frameworks

L&T is leveraging NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to transform industrial operations through frameworks like the "Lights-Out Factory". The venture also supports the deployment of agentic AI across various L&T subsidiaries.

This sovereign infrastructure allows for the secure and scalable training of indigenous foundation models tailored to India’s linguistic diversity and sector-specific needs.

The initiative is optimised for accelerated computing, serving domestic and international AI demand. By onshoring essential chip technologies, the venture reinforces India's leadership in the global AI economy.

The goal is to move beyond high-level discussions to deliver tangible outcomes that support economic growth and the sustainable use of artificial intelligence.

Delivering measurable economic impact through AI

S N Subrahmanyan, Chairman & Managing Director - L&T, said: “India’s enterprises are ready to move from AI pilots to production-scale deployment. The investment establishes the foundation – secure, scalable, and sovereign infrastructure – required to power manufacturing, energy, financial services, healthcare and public services.

"With NVIDIA’s platforms and L&T’s execution strength, we are building infrastructure that will enable AI to deliver measurable economic impact.”

S N added that the investment establishes the foundation for delivering measurable economic impact. The focus is on moving toward practical, impact-driven outcomes that benefit the nation through digital and industrial transformation.

Democratising access across the global south

Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said: “AI is driving the largest infrastructure buildout in human history – everyone will use it, every company will be powered by it and every country will build it. Prime Minister Modi has outlined a bold vision to democratise AI access across the Global South and position India as a global hub for digital infrastructure.

"Together with L&T – an 88-year-old engineering and nation-building leader – we are laying the foundation for world-class AI infrastructure that will power India’s growth and help realise the full vision of India AI.”

Advancing the vision of IndiaAI Mission

The IndiaAI Mission aims to establish an inclusive AI ecosystem aligned with national development goals.

Key pillars include the IndiaAI Compute pillar, which provides high-end GPUs at affordable costs, and the IndiaAI Foundation Models pillar, which develops indigenous Large Multimodal Models.

This venture between L&T and NVIDIA directly advances these objectives by creating AI factories at a national scale.

The mission also focuses on skills development through the IndiaAI FutureSkills pillar and supports startups via the IndiaAI Startup Financing pillar.