Lightstorm Secures US$300M Debt Facility for AI Superhighway and I-2SEA Subsea Cable

Subsea cables were once boring plumbing for the internet — until AI made them strategic infrastructure. The latest evidence comes from Lightstorm, the Singapore-based connectivity provider that has secured a ₹2,500 crore (approximately US$300 million) debt facility from IndusInd Bank to accelerate its "AI Superhighway" build-out, including the I-2SEA submarine cable system linking India, Malaysia and Singapore.

The 10-year fully underwritten facility, announced this week, will finance the next phase of Lightstorm's AI infrastructure expansion: a dedicated, deep-trenched fibre corridor connecting major data centre hubs in Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad, and extending to hyperscale AI zones in Singapore and Malaysia via the I-2SEA cable. The 3,600-kilometre system — built in consortium with Microsoft, Singtel and Tata Communications — is purpose-designed to interconnect AI regions across India and Southeast Asia, with Singapore as the regional terminus.

The financing reflects how the economics of AI infrastructure are shifting. Training clusters are no longer confined to one geography — compute is distributed across regions, and the network connecting those clusters has become as critical as the GPUs themselves. Lightstorm says it is already seeing accelerating demand from hyperscalers and enterprises investing in AI infrastructure across India and APAC, and the facility lets it build ahead of that demand rather than chase it.

For Singapore, the I-2SEA system is part of a broader pattern of the city-state positioning itself as the connective tissue of Asia's AI economy. Singtel's involvement gives Singapore's incumbent telco a direct stake in the cable, while Lightstorm's Singapore base means the financing, engineering and operations coordination run through the city. As data centre capacity tightens in Singapore proper, the ability to route AI workloads to and from regional hubs becomes a competitive asset in its own right.

Why it matters for Singapore: A US$300 million vote of confidence in India-Singapore connectivity is really a vote on whether Singapore remains the preferred gateway for AI workloads across South and Southeast Asia. With Singtel as a consortium partner and hyperscale zones in Singapore as a stated destination for the cable, the I-2SEA project — and the financing behind it — shows the AI race is as much about bandwidth as about chips.