Elon Musk calls Google's $40 billion Texas investment ‘mind-blowing’, CEO Sundar Pichai responds: ‘Between abundant sand, plenty of sun and space..’

Google has announced a significant investment in its US infrastructure, pledging $40 billion toward expansion in Texas through 2027. This represents one of the company's largest US infrastructure initiatives to date.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed the investment in an online post which has drawn praise from rival tech billionaire Elon Musk, who called the AI spending spree “mind-blowing” while predicting even greater expenditures ahead.The exchange between Musk and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on social media highlighted both the scale of investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and Texas's emergence as a major tech hub, with Pichai touting the state's natural advantages for data center development.

$40 billion commitment to Cloud and AI

Pichai announced the investment in a social media post, describing it as one of Google's largest US infrastructure commitments to date.“Today, we're announcing a new $40B investment in Texas through 2027 to build Cloud & AI infrastructure and support thousands of new jobs,” Pichai wrote.“This includes new data centers in Armstrong and Haskell Counties and a major investment to strengthen energy resilience and abundance,” he added.

The CEO also revealed that Google will fund efforts to more than double Texas's projected pipeline of new electricians to support the AI era, thanking Texas Governor Greg Abbott for his continued support after 15 years of Google's presence in the state.

Musk’s 'mind-blowing' response

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who relocated his companies' headquarters to Texas and has been critical of Google in the past, responded enthusiastically to the announcement.“It's mind-blowing how much money is being spent on AI compute so fast! But still many orders of magnitude to go…” Musk wrote.Pichai replied with a lighthearted nod to Texas's geographic and natural advantages: “Between abundant sand, plenty of sun and space (literally) to put it in, we can do it :)”Google emphasised that the investment will prioritise responsible infrastructure growth, including adding clean energy resources to the Texas grid.