Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, unveiled one of the most ambitious private-sector technology investments in Indian history on Thursday, announcing a R10 trillion (~$110 billion) plan to develop renewable energy-powered, AI-ready data centers and edge computing infrastructure across the country over the next seven years.
Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Ambani framed the initiative as India’s decisive entry into what he called “the Intelligence Revolution — more profound than any previous Industrial Revolution.”
The investment will fund the creation of multiple gigawatt-scale data centers, a nationwide edge computing network, and a suite of AI services deeply integrated with Reliance’s Jio telecom platform. Construction has already begun on multi-gigawatt facilities in Jamnagar, Gujarat — Reliance’s flagship industrial complex — with more than 120 megawatts of capacity expected to come online in the second half of 2026.
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The entire build-out will draw on Reliance’s existing 10 GW of surplus renewable energy capacity from large-scale solar projects in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. Ambani emphasized that the project addresses what he sees as the single biggest constraint in AI today: “scarcity and high cost of compute.”
He pledged that Reliance would drive down the cost of AI services in India as dramatically as Jio once reduced mobile data prices — from among the world’s highest to free effectively — and insisted that India “cannot afford to rent intelligence” from foreign providers.
The long-term goal, he said, is for India to become not just a consumer but “a creator, builder, and exporter of intelligence.”
The $110 billion commitment is projected to catalyze a $250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India by 2035, while triggering an additional $150 billion in private-sector spending across server manufacturing, sovereign cloud platforms, advanced cooling systems, power electronics, and related industries. Reliance expects the program to generate thousands of high-skill jobs and establish India as a net exporter of computing capacity and AI services.
The plan builds directly on Adani Group’s $100 billion AI data center pledge earlier this week, signaling that India’s two largest conglomerates are now racing to dominate the country’s emerging AI infrastructure market. The Indian government has forecast more than $200 billion in total AI infrastructure spending over the next two years, supported by the IndiaAI Mission and policies promoting domestic compute sovereignty.
Global technology companies are also accelerating their footprint in India. OpenAI recently partnered with the Tata Group to develop 100 MW of AI capacity, with plans to scale to 1 GW. Google (Alphabet) committed $15 billion over five years to build an AI data center hub in southern India. These moves reflect India’s strategic importance: a population exceeding 1.4 billion, the world’s largest developer community, favorable demographics, low-cost renewable energy, and proactive government support make it one of the most attractive markets for AI infrastructure outside the U.S. and China.
Reliance will collaborate with Indian enterprises, startups, academic institutions, and government bodies to embed AI across key sectors: manufacturing (predictive maintenance, quality control), logistics (supply chain orchestration), agriculture (precision farming, crop monitoring), healthcare (diagnostics, telemedicine), and financial services (fraud detection, credit scoring, personalized advisory). Jio has already partnered with Google to offer free Gemini AI Pro access to millions of users and is developing AI capabilities in multiple Indian languages to drive inclusion and mass adoption.
The announcement was delivered on the opening day of the India AI Impact Summit (February 16–20, 2026), India’s first major international AI conference, attended by global leaders including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai. The summit has positioned India as a serious contender in the global AI race, with domestic conglomerates like Reliance and Adani leading the charge on compute infrastructure.
However, execution at this scale carries significant challenges. Building gigawatt-scale, renewable-powered data centers requires massive capital allocation, land acquisition, regulatory approvals across multiple states, grid integration of intermittent renewables, and advanced cooling and power management for dense AI workloads. Competition for prime locations, power capacity, and skilled talent is already intense among Reliance, Adani, Tata, global hyperscalers (Google, Microsoft, AWS, Meta), and domestic players like Jio and Airtel. Reliance’s track record of executing large-scale infrastructure projects — Jio’s nationwide 4G rollout in 2016, green energy buildout to 10 GW surplus, and retail expansion — provides credibility.
However, AI data centers demand precision engineering, near-perfect uptime, and rapid scaling — areas where even established operators have faced delays.
The announcement strengthens the narrative of India as a major AI compute hub, with low-cost renewables, vast talent, and government backing making it increasingly attractive compared with power-constrained U.S. regions and high-cost European markets. If Reliance delivers on its R10 trillion vision, the impact would be transformative: reducing India’s dependence on foreign cloud and compute providers, driving down AI inference and training costs for Indian enterprises and startups, creating a robust domestic AI supply chain, and accelerating adoption in underserved sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, and education.