Robin Khuda, founder and chief executive officer of AirTrunk, speaks during the Australian Financial Review Business Summit in Sydney, Australia, on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg© 2026 Bloomberg Finance LPAirTrunk—the data center company founded by Australian billionaire Robin Khudaand backed by U.S. private equity firm Blackstone—will develop a three-gigawatt data center project in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, where it plans to invest 2 trillion rupees ($21 billion).The project was announced by Maharashtra’s chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on X (formerly Twitter) after the two parties signed the letter of intent to buy the land for the project that will be located in Raigad, a district on the outskirts of India’s financial capital, Mumbai.“We exchanged a letter of intent for land allotment at the Raigad Pen Growth Centre (Orange City) for their upcoming data center—a massive 2 trillion rupees investment with 3 gigawatts capacity,” Fadnavis said in his post. AirTrunk didn’t respond to Forbes Asia’s request for comments.Headquartered in Sydney, AirTrunk has been expanding its footprint across the Asia Pacific region with presence across Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. In April, the company expanded in India with acquisition of Lumina CloudInfra, which was founded Blackstone, a major shareholder in AirTrunk. Lumina has plans to build 600 megawatts of data center capacity and up to $5 billion in development potential.Data center investments are booming in India as demand for AI and cloud computing continues to grow. The trend is also attracting the country’s richest business tycoons. Reliance Industries, controlled by Mukesh Ambani, and Adani Enterprises, led by Gautam Adani, are each planning to invest about $100 billion in data center and other digital infrastructure projects across India in the coming years.MORE FOR YOUWith an estimated net worth of $2.1 billion according to Forbes’ real-time data, Bangladesh-born Khuda is among the wealthiest in Australia. He founded AirTrunk in 2015 and grew the company to have a strong presence across the Asia Pacific. In 2024, a consortium led by Blackstone and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board acquired AirTrunk in a $16 billion deal. Khuda is AirTrunk’s CEO and retains a small but valuable stake in the company.