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Digital infrastructure company Lightstorm has secured an INR 2,500 crore debt facility led by IndusInd Bank to support the expansion of its fibre network for India’s growing AI infrastructure. The company has also launched an AI-focused high-capacity fibre network, described as an AI superhighway, connecting AI hubs across India’s southern corridor with hyperscale centres in Singapore and Malaysia through the I-2SEA subsea cable system. The network is designed to provide high-capacity, low-jitter connectivity between data centres and AI infrastructure, while Lightstorm’s existing network spans more than 30,000 km of terrestrial fibre and 21,000 km of subsea fibre.
Digital infrastructure company Lightstorm has secured an INR 2,500 crore debt facility led by IndusInd Bank as it expands its network infrastructure to support the growing demand for AI and data centre connectivity in India.
The company has launched what it calls an AI superhighway, a utility-grade, deep-trenched and high-capacity fibre network designed to connect AI hubs across India’s southern corridor with hyperscale data centre centres in Singapore and Malaysia through the I-2SEA subsea cable system.
The debt facility has a 10-year tenor and has been fully underwritten. Lightstorm said the financing will support the next phase of its network expansion as demand for infrastructure connecting AI compute facilities continues to increase.
India is seeing faster deployment of data centres and graphics processing unit (GPU) clusters by hyperscalers, increasing the need for high-capacity networks that can move large volumes of data between computing facilities. Lightstorm said the network connecting these facilities needs to keep pace with the expansion of AI compute infrastructure.
The domestic portion of the AI superhighway will run across the southern corridor and connect key AI zones in India. The international extension will use the I-2SEA subsea cable system to provide a direct high-capacity connection to Singapore and Malaysia.
The I-2SEA cable system is being developed as a roughly 3,600-km subsea fibre link between India, Malaysia and Singapore. The system is intended to connect fast-growing AI and hyperscaler data centre locations in India, including Hyderabad and Chennai, with Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. NEC has signed a supply contract for the cable system with a consortium that includes Lightstorm, Microsoft, Singtel and Tata Communications.
Lightstorm said its SmartNet AI Fabric currently provides purpose-built connectivity across more than 30,000 km of terrestrial fibre and over 21,000 km of subsea fibre. Its network is connected to more than 100 data centres globally.
The company said the SmartNet AI Fabric is designed to provide low-jitter and loss-optimised transport, which is relevant for AI workloads that require high data transfer capacity and consistent network performance.
Lightstorm delivers these connectivity services through its Polarin Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) platform. The platform allows enterprises, hyperscalers and AI infrastructure providers to provision and monitor connectivity on demand, while providing real-time visibility into network health and performance.
The expansion comes as data centre development in India increasingly extends beyond conventional enterprise and cloud requirements. AI workloads require large GPU clusters and continuous movement of data between computing facilities, making fibre and subsea connectivity an important part of the wider data centre infrastructure.
The I-2SEA connection is expected to add an international route between India’s emerging AI and hyperscale locations and established data centre and cloud interconnection hubs in Southeast Asia. For Lightstorm, the new domestic and international network is aimed at linking these infrastructure clusters through a single high-capacity connectivity framework.
Source PTI
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