Reliance's AI strategy bets on compute, power and connectivity at scale

Reliance's AGM showed the conglomerate is shifting from being viewed as an energy-retail giant to an AI infrastructure player built around data centres, compute, connectivity, and power

Artificial intelligence (AI) was one of the dominant themes at Reliance Industries' annual general meeting last week. While much of the recent conversation around AI has centred on chatbots and consumer applications, the company's latest announcements appear to be focusing on the infrastructure that powers AI, including data centres, computing capacity, connectivity and energy.

 

In his message, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said a major challenge facing AI in India is the scarcity and high cost of computing power. He said that the company wants to address that gap by building what it calls a "sovereign AI backbone" for India.

What Reliance announced on AI

Reliance announced the plan to build a sovereign AI backbone at Jamnagar. The company said the facility will be powered by clean energy generated from its own renewable energy platform in Kutch. The first 120 megawatts of capacity are expected to be commissioned by the end of 2026.

 

The company also shared details about the computing infrastructure it plans to deploy. It said that it is operationalising an initial fleet of Nvidia GB300 graphics processing units (GPUs). According to the company, this is equivalent to more than 75,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs on an AI inference basis. Once the first phase becomes fully operational, the company could scale the capacity to more than 200,000 H100-equivalent GPUs.

 

Alongside infrastructure, the company highlighted partnerships with Google, Meta and Nvidia. Google AI Pro powered by Gemini is being offered to Jio users, while Reliance's collaboration with Meta focuses on deploying Llama-based AI models for enterprises.

The AI stack Reliance is assembling

Reliance is building a presence across several parts of the AI value chain, from connectivity and compute to energy and distribution

 

At the centre of the company's AI ecosystem is Jio, which gives the group access to one of the country's largest digital networks. Jio's user base has crossed 524 million, including 268 million 5G subscribers. JioAirFiber has connected 13 million homes, while annual data traffic on its network touched 241 exabytes in FY26.

 

Reliance is now looking to build AI infrastructure on top of that foundation.

 

Another one is energy. AI infrastructure requires enormous amounts of power, and Reliance plans to run its proposed sovereign AI backbone using renewable energy generated from its own clean energy projects. The company is developing a renewable energy hub in Kutch that is expected to produce more than 40 billion units of green electricity annually once fully operational.

India's AI ecosystem: Other players

Several Indian companies are investing in parts of the AI ecosystem. Adani Group has data centres, renewable energy assets, and transmission infrastructure. Bharti Airtel operates telecom networks and Nxtra data centres. Tata Group has enterprise technology capabilities through TCS and cloud partnerships. Data-centre specialists such as Yotta focus on computing infrastructure.

 

As the AI race in India and globally is increasingly becoming a focused over who controls computing power, energy, and connectivity, Reliance's latest announcements suggest that the industry is now looking at those assets as the foundation of the next phase of digital growth.