Anagha Rajesh of BioCompute Inc. is building the world’s first DNA‑powered data center, shifting storage from silicon to synthetic DNA strands suspended in a drop of liquid.
The DNA storage claim: “store terabytes in a drop of liquid and use barely any power.”
- India is committing $250 billion to data‑centre construction.
- Moody’s expects the build‑out to add only 0.13 % to India’s GDP by 2030.
- Domestic data centres will let Indian AI founders reduce USD outflows and attract USD inflows.
I see compute rising to the strategic importance of oil, and I believe India must develop its own sovereign compute infrastructure to avoid the geopolitical vulnerabilities that come with importing critical digital capacity.
Compute is fast becoming the new oil.
India must build its own compute: a country that imports all its compute is as exposed as one that imports all its oil.
Recently, Trump announced a deal with Denmark that would give the U.S. control over Greenland's security.
Greenland wasn’t as important on the old map and is strategic on the new one: whoever wants to control AI has to control compute and compute needs stable land, cold air, and cheap power, all the things the Arctic happens to have.
And that changes how you read the data center race: many call it a chip war, but you need the data centers to house them, the power to run them, the cooling systems to keep them operating, and the networks to connect them.
That is why compute is becoming strategic infrastructure.
India doesn't need to manufacture every GPU to have AI sovereignty but it does need reliable access to large‑scale compute that it can depend on.
The countries that secure that infrastructure early will have much more control over what they can build with AI.
My decision is to prioritize domestic data‑center capacity, focusing on site selection, power, cooling, and network resilience rather than only chasing chip fab ownership.