Microsoft partners with a consortium led by Lightstorm to establish a subsea cable connecting India and Southeast Asia.

      Microsoft has become part of a consortium led by Lightstorm, a company based in Singapore, to create a new subsea cable that will connect India with Singapore and Malaysia, as announced on Thursday. The I-2SEA system will span 3,600 kilometers and is designed to accommodate the AI, cloud, and hyperscale workloads that have positioned India as one of the most competitive data center markets globally.

      In addition to Microsoft and Lightstorm, the consortium includes Tata Communications, Singtel from Singapore, ASEAN Cableship, and Japan's NEC Corporation, which traditionally handles the manufacturing and installation of subsea cables for projects of this magnitude. The cable is projected to be operational by the fourth quarter of 2029, allowing the consortium about three years to survey routes, obtain permits, and lay the cable across open seas.

      One landing station will be located at Machilipatnam, on the coast of Andhra Pradesh, chosen due to its direct subsea route to data center clusters further inland near Hyderabad. Both Meta and Alphabet have announced separate data center initiatives in the area, indicating that a dedicated high-capacity route from the coast typically follows such hyperscaler commitments rather than precedes them.

      This initiative aligns with a broader trend observed in the past year, where Microsoft has actively participated in sovereign and regional infrastructure projects, rather than solely relying on its own financial resources. The company has already invested over $1 billion in Thailand and $3.2 billion in Sweden for cloud and AI infrastructure, in addition to a reported $17.5 billion to expand its presence in India.

      The importance of this cable stems from India's unique data landscape. The nation generates and consumes approximately one-fifth of the world's data yet only has about 3% of global data center capacity, creating a mismatch that has prompted an influx of hyperscaler and domestic investment into the market. Google has committed $15 billion to develop a data center hub in southern India, while Reliance's Jio Platforms has been expanding its infrastructure. Jio filed in June for what could be India's largest IPO to manage debt and increase capacity for its AI and cloud projects.

      Lightstorm is a relatively new player joining this trend, operating about 50,000 kilometers of fiber, split between 30,000 kilometers within India and 21,000 kilometers across subsea Pacific routes. The company is also considering an initial public offering as it expands throughout the Asia Pacific region.

      While a subsea cable of this magnitude won't independently solve capacity issues, it facilitates faster and more reliable data transfer between coasts, which is crucial for AI workloads that rely on moving substantial amounts of training and inference data across borders. However, the necessary computing infrastructure has to be constructed, powered, and cooled on land.

      The I-2SEA project effectively alleviates one predictable bottleneck leading up to 2029, during a time when other crucial components like power, chips, and land are already in short supply. Other hyperscalers are making similar investments in Indian infrastructure at a comparable pace. Amazon has dedicated tens of billions of dollars to its initiatives in India, and the Adani Group is pursuing a $100 billion, ten-year infrastructure expansion, implying that closing the country’s capacity gap will require years of concurrent development rather than relying on a single project.

      NEC’s involvement is particularly noteworthy due to its extensive experience in laying and maintaining transpacific and Asian subsea routes. None of the consortium partners disclosed the project's cost or the specific allocation of construction and operating expenses among them. Such details, along with permitting timelines in each of the three landing countries, are expected to emerge as the project transitions from announcement to construction.