Reliance Jio to be among first scalable token services providers: CEO
Reliance Jio plans to integrate AI deeply into its telecom operations and position itself among the first scalable token services providers globally, group CEO Mathew Oommen said
 "Reliance Jio to be among first scalable token services providers: CEO")
Reliance Jio is aiming to be one of the first scalable token services providers in the world by deeply adopting and integrating AI into its operations, said Jio Platforms Limited group chief executive officer Mathew Oommen at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, noting that the AI era was not an upgrade but a reset, and telecom service providers that adopt AI will succeed while others will struggle.
“The telecom currency is going to be rapidly changing from minutes to bytes to tokens. And we sincerely believe at Jio, we will be one of the first scalable token services providers,” Oommen said.
The top executive of the company, which is expected to go public by July this year, said the targets were based on its extensive background of having made voice service free of cost and data costing 9 cents a GB in India, among the largest markets globally.
“We delivered as Jio with now over 525 million subscribers, 9 cents a GB, and we are determined to deliver the lowest cost of dollar per token per watt. Let me reiterate, we do not want to be the largest token pipe beyond being the connectivity pipe, because the AI reckoning is going to fundamentally change Jio networks and your devices. Because they are not going to be the same,” he said.
He added that the largest telecom services provider in India had certain levers that could enable it to become the fabric of that AI infrastructure and become the owner of ‘tokenomics’. “And that is the opportunity, so that we can become the largest token generator opportunity and not just be another token pipe,” he said.
Underscoring the importance of the telecom sector, which was going to be the foundational layer for building intelligence infrastructure at scale across the energy, finance, transportation, finance, defence, and security sectors.
The top executive said that with AI infrastructure the telecom infrastructure was going to change and intelligent endpoints were going to be a key pillar. However, a trusted intelligence infrastructure will be the fundamental building block of the seven-layer intelligence architecture that the company will be building.
“This is not going to be built by a set of tools that is kind of broken and fragmented, but from a unified, integrated architecture. This is about integrating workflows and delivering outcomes. This is what I call the AI command architecture framework,” he said, adding that traditional interfaces were going to disappear and all connected systems would think, coordinate, and act in real time.
Oommen said that the industry was going through a multi-generational shift not just in telecom but in the economy and geopolitical balances of society. “For telecom, this is a great opportunity. Whether you call it tokens, whether you call it the four pillars of transformation that I talked about, or I am calling this Intelligence Grid that we will own,” he said.
“In some minds it (AI) could be a big anxiety, but I also believe it is the biggest opportunity, and the outcomes are going to be determined by the choices we make,” he added.
Oommen also outlined the shift from connectivity to intelligence, highlighting the transformative role of innovation, collaboration, and resilient digital infrastructure in shaping a more connected world.
In 2026, over $3 trillion is going to be put into AI, and of that about $810 billion is just for a few hyperscalers, he said, adding that this was completely different from the industrial to the internet era.
“This is clearly a generational transformation. In the industrial era, if you look at it, mechanised production dominated. The internet era is what we actually live in today, with the internet and cloud, as we evolve into the AI era. The AI era is not an upgrade cycle. It is completely resetting the economic and business equation. Because we are going to be creating a new business of trillions of dollars and that to me is the biggest opportunity,” he added.