Canadian pension giant joins race to fund India’s AI-fueled data center boom

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) is committing up to ₹70 billion ($741 million) to Indian data center operator CtrlS, the latest large-scale wager on India’s accelerating demand for cloud and artificial-intelligence infrastructure [1]. Under the agreement announced Wednesday, CPP Investments will deploy ₹40 billion ($423 million) for an 8.2% equity stake in CtrlS and earmark up to ₹30 billion ($317 million) for a joint venture that will develop hyperscale data center campuses across India [1]. CPP Investments will hold a 48% share of the venture, with CtrlS retaining 52% [1]. The Canadian pension manager, which operates at arm’s length from the federal government and oversees more than C$793 billion in assets for 22 million Canadians, has been building a digital-infrastructure portfolio since 2017 [7]. CtrlS, founded in 2007 and headquartered in Hyderabad, already runs more than 15 data centers in the country [1]. In 2023 the company outlined plans to invest $2 billion over six years to expand its footprint [1]. “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 [1]. The transaction adds to a wave of capital targeting India’s data-center sector. Earlier this month, Blackstone-backed AirTrunk pledged $30 billion to build five gigawatts of capacity by 2030, and Meta partnered with Reliance Industries on a 168-megawatt AI-enabled data center in Gujarat [1]. India’s service sector already accounts for roughly 55% of gross domestic product, and the government has offered tax exemptions for foreign cloud providers through 2047 on services sold overseas if workloads run from domestic data centers [1][3]. CPP Investments is one of Canada’s so-called “Maple 8” pension funds, a group that includes the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which managed more than $266 billion in net assets at the end of 2024 [7][9]. The fund has been an active investor in India since 2009 and held net assets of about $20 billion in the country as of March 31 [1]. Its previous technology-related deals include participating in the 2023 take-private of experience-management platform Qualtrics alongside Silver Lake [8]. India’s rapid data-center buildout has not yet been matched by equivalent progress in homegrown frontier AI models. A small cluster of startups, including Sarvam, is developing indigenous systems, but most underlying AI technology used by Indian firms continues to be supplied by U.S. companies [1]. The expansion is also expected to intensify pressure on electricity and water resources, underscoring challenges that could accompany the country’s ambitions to become a major AI-infrastructure hub [1].