Airtel raises $1 billion for data centers from Carlyle and other PE firms
A Bharti Airtel office building seen in Gurugram, on the outskirts of New Delhi.
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India’s telecom giant Bharti Airtel It raised $1 billion for its data center arm Nxtra Data from private equity firms Alpha Wave. Carlyle and Anchorage Capital underscore the growing global interest in the sector.
Bharti Airtel is India’s second-largest telecom operator and the raise will value Nxtra Data at around $3.1 billion once the transaction is completed, the company said in a filing to the stock exchange on Monday.
Airtel said Nxtra Data will receive $435 million from Florida-based Alpha Wave Global, $240 million from Washington-based existing investor Carlyle and $35 million from New York City Anchorage Capital, and will contribute the remaining amount.
Airtel said the new capital will support Nxtra’s expansion across India.
Airtel vice president Gopal Vittal said Nxtra is building “data center networks” aimed at meeting the evolving needs of enterprises, hyperscalers and government customers.
He added that Nxtra has approximately 300 MW of data center capacity, which “will be scaled to 1 GW over the next few years, targeting ~25% market share.” There are currently 14 large data centers and more than 120 smaller, decentralized facilities located closer to end users and devices.
data center boom
“India has a tremendous AI opportunity; Indians are already meaningfully engaging with platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI tools,” Navroz D. Udwadia, co-founder of Alpha Wave Global, said in the filing. He added that India’s data center capacity needs to increase significantly to keep up with demand from hyperscalers and large language models.
Global interest in India’s data center space is rising sharply amid rising AI workloads. In December, Microsoft And Amazon It has committed more than $50 billion to India’s cloud and AI infrastructure in less than 24 hours. in October, Google It announced that it will invest $15 billion to establish the largest data center center outside the United States in India.
To continue this momentum, the Indian government earlier this year announced a 20-year tax exemption for hyperscalers that use data centers in the country to serve global customers.
Due to already low infrastructure costs and the newly announced tax holiday, India is becoming increasingly attractive for hyperscalers compared to rival hubs such as Singapore, UAE and Ireland.
“We have built a strong partnership with Airtel and continue to believe Nxtra is well positioned to capitalize on India’s long-term digital infrastructure tailwinds,” Kapil Modi, partner at Carlyle India Advisors, said in the filing.
India’s total installed data center capacity Expected to exceed 2GW by 2026According to KPMG’s December report, there was an increase of just over 1GW in 2025. The firm predicts that capacity will increase fivefold to more than 8 GW by 2030, creating an estimated $30 billion in capital expenditure.
Yotta Data Services, another Indian data center company, is investing $2 billion to build a data centre. NvidiaThe backed AI center plans to list on public markets in late 2026 or early 2027 to raise funds for expansion, it told CNBC’s “Inside India” program earlier this year.
