NTT Chennai 2 — Ambattur, Tamil NaduNTT Global Data Centers · Ambattur, Chennai · 34.8 MW critical IT load · 2 x 17.4 MW · 5,000 racks · 6 acres

NTT Chennai 2 in Ambattur is 34.8 MW of critical IT load across two nine-storey buildings of 17.4 MW and 2,500 racks each, on six acres, launched on 29 June 2023 — the day the MIST subsea cable, connecting Myanmar, Malaysia, India and Singapore, arrived in the city. That is a rare thing in this registry: a campus with a rack count, a floor count, an acreage and a date, all published by the operator. It is also only half built. Building A went live at the launch; Building B has no verified stage three years later. And the investment figure has been reported at USD 300 million in one account and USD 350 million in another — a 17% gap on the same announcement. At 5.8 MW of critical IT per acre, Chennai 2 is the least land-efficient of NTT’s three documented campuses, which is what six acres in an industrial suburb of a metro city costs you.

1At a glance

2Half of it is standing

NTT announced the campus at its full two-building capacity on the day the first building opened. That is a normal way to announce a campus and a terrible way to count one.

Two plus two equals four. Seventeen point four plus seventeen point four equals thirty-four point eight. This is the cleanest campus structure in the file, and it is still only 50% delivered.

The registry counts the building, not the campus. Chennai 2A is record PRJ-168 and carries the 17.4 MW; this record carries the plan and the gap.

35,000 racks and 6.96 kW each

Chennai 2 publishes a rack count, which puts it in a group of four in this registry. What it does with those racks is the interesting part.

Six point ninety-six kilowatts of IT per cabinet is a solid, modern, enterprise-and-cloud number. It is not an AI number.

For comparison, the Metropolitan Stock Exchange took 17.2 kW racks at NTT’s Chandivali campus in July 2026 — two and a half times this density. A 9-storey tower built for 7 kW cabinets cannot be converted to 17 kW without reworking cooling, floor loading and the power distribution downstream of the UPS on every floor.

That is the single most useful thing about a published rack count: it tells you what a building can never be, not just what it is now.

4Land efficiency: 5.8 MW per acre

Published acreage is rarer than published megawatts, which makes this a figure the market mostly guesses at. NTT publishes it for three campuses.

Chennai 2 is the least land-efficient of the three, and the reason is structural rather than a design failure: it is two nine-storey towers on six acres in an established industrial suburb, which means the capacity is stacked vertically rather than spread across a 54-acre field.

Five point eight megawatts per acre is still high by any global standard. A 100 MW Indian campus at this ratio needs seventeen acres — which is why the large players are buying 40 to 54 acres at a time and why land banking has become the first move in every serious expansion.

5The MIST cable, and why it matters

Chennai 2 did not launch alone. It launched with a subsea cable, and that pairing is the reason the campus is in Ambattur rather than somewhere cheaper.

The three stated purposes are worth taking at face value, because they explain a facility that otherwise looks overspecified for its city: Chennai’s pitch is not Indian domestic demand. It is disaster recovery for enterprises with primary sites elsewhere, and export capacity to South East Asia where supply is tight.

A 34.8 MW campus next to an international cable landing is a different asset from a 34.8 MW campus inland. That is why the August 2026 comparison that matters for Chennai is not against Mumbai but against Singapore and Johor — and why Tamil Nadu’s 296.6 MW counted capacity carries more strategic weight than its size suggests.

The registry’s own note at the launch: 205 MW of IT power across 16 facilities in June 2023. By April 2026 NTT was describing more than 265 MW across more than 18 facilities. Both are portfolio statements, and neither is a building.

6Procurement

7Limits and open questions

• 34.8 MW is the full two-building campus and counts zero here. Only 17.4 MW is live.
• Building B has no published construction or commissioning evidence since the June 2023 announcement.
• The investment figure is published twice, differently. USD 300 million and USD 350 million appear in national coverage of the same launch. The ₹76 to ₹89 crore per MW range follows from that and is scope-sensitive.
• The 93 sq ft per rack figure is derived from the 13,300 sq ft per MW constant, which mixes published building area and server space. It is an estimate.
• No PUE, no facility load, no occupancy, no tenant list.
• Only one of the two towers is dated. The 2027 expansion date carried by some directories is not an operator statement.
• What would close it. A stage for Building B and a facility load for Building A.

8Sources

Sources: NTT newsroom release of 29 June 2023 announcing Chennai 2 and the MIST cable, NTT Global Data Centers Chennai 2 facility page, Data Center Dynamics launch coverage, Economic Times and Times of India coverage of the investment and the launch, Business Standard, Baxtel and Datacentermap listings, and Datacenters.com facility listing.