HCLTech announced plans to establish its first AI Data Center in the upcoming Odisha Sovereign AI Park, in partnership with Sarvam and the Government of Odisha. The planned capital outlay for the project is Rs 14,257 crores, approximately $1.6 billion, including financial assistance from the Government of Odisha. The announcement follows HCLTech’s July 13, 2026 disclosure of its planned entry into the full-stack AI market.
The investment is intended to strengthen India’s sovereign AI capabilities and local developer ecosystem by combining HCLTech’s full-stack AI capabilities with Sarvam’s foundation models to deliver sector-specific AI applications to private and public sector enterprises. The companies said the project will also support multilingual AI-based services aimed at reaching underserved populations. A memorandum of understanding formalizing the partnership was signed in the presence of Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, Odisha Minister of Electronics and IT Dr. Mukesh Mahaling, HCLTech Chairperson Roshni Nadar Malhotra, HCLTech CEO and Managing Director C Vijayakumar, and Sarvam Co-Founder Pratyush Kumar.
HCLTech said India’s data center ecosystem is experiencing rapid growth, driven by demand from the country’s expanding digital economy, data localization requirements, and infrastructure needs to support GPU deployments for AI training and inference workloads. HCLTech employs more than 223,000 people across 60 countries and reported consolidated revenues of $14.8 billion for the 12 months ending June 2026.
KEY QUOTES:
“HCLTech has been a flagbearer of India’s technology industry. In line with the Digital India and Atmanirbhar Bharat vision of Hon’ble Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi, we strive to be an enabler of India’s sovereign AI ecosystem with differentiated offerings across the value chain through focused investments and partnerships. We are pleased to start this endeavor in partnership with Odisha government and Sarvam.”
Roshni Nadar Malhotra, Chairperson, HCLTech
“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. Odisha offers a progressive policy environment backed by excellent infrastructure and we look forward to working with them in collaboration with Sarvam.”
C Vijayakumar, CEO and Managing Director, HCLTech
“The Odisha Sovereign AI Park will connect high-performance compute with Indian models and real-world applications. Together with HCLTech, we are excited to bring Sarvam’s full-stack AI capabilities to enterprises and public systems at scale.”
Pratyush Kumar, Co-Founder, Sarvam
