Clean Max plans $5.3 billion of clean energy in Andhra Pradesh, and AI is the customer

Clean Max plans to invest nearly $5.3 billion in clean energy and an AI computing facility in Andhra Pradesh, under a non-binding agreement signed with the state's economic development board on Thursday 3

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. Per these reports, it is one of the larger clean-energy investment plans tied to AI power demand in India.

The power and the computers

The plan covers about 3 GW of wind and solar generation plus 1 GW of pumped hydro storage, which stores electricity by pumping water uphill when power is plentiful and releasing it when it is not, built over the next five years 3

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. The customer is a 2 GW AI computing facility in Kurnool district, where the figure describes how much power the site can draw 3

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. Neysa, an AI cloud provider described as Blackstone-backed, will anchor it with 1 GW of computing capacity 3

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Why put the computer next to the power

Kuldeep Jain, Clean Max's founder and managing director, says the project's compute factories are power guzzlers and should sit near generation. As ET put it, moving them "from a big city to a remote location" is a first for his company 1

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. "Compute is becoming one of the largest new sources of power demand, and it needs clean energy that is available every hour of the day. In Andhra Pradesh, we are planning generation, storage and distribution integrated with the compute load they serve, rather than one after the other," he said 2

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Demand is already visible in the company's book. Data centre and AI customers accounted for 41% of Clean Max's contracted renewable power sales as of September, per the company, which listed on Indian exchanges in March 3

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. One outlet calls Clean Max India's biggest renewable energy provider for commercial and industrial customers 1

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State backing, and the road to construction

Andhra Pradesh IT minister Nara Lokesh met the Clean Max, Neysa and Blackstone delegation at the summit and endorsed the project. "AI will run on compute, and compute will run on clean power. CleanMax and Neysa, with Blackstone's backing, are bringing both together in Orvakal," he said 1

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. The announcement landed on a day of other major state proposals, including Reliance's planned $4.6 billion coal-to-gas project and a $2 billion plant investment from Kia and its suppliers 3

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. The same outlet says the state is also seeking to position itself as a destination for data centre and AI investment, with an AI hub proposed in Visakhapatnam 1

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For now the pledge is a memorandum. The projects are to be built in phases, with a target of at least 1.5 GW of renewable capacity by 2029 3

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. One outlet reports commissioning is targeted for March 2028, with around 1,000 direct and 1,000 indirect jobs expected 1

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. The next concrete step is a licence application, which a Clean Max subsidiary plans to file with the state's electricity regulator to run the compute factory's own power network 2

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