Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd is expected to invest around $12–15 billion over the next few years to build advanced artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, including a massive 1GW data centre, according to a report by Morgan Stanley.
At the company’s annual general meeting in August, Ambani announced a significant push into AI through a new subsidiary and several strategic collaborations.
The newly formed Reliance Intelligence, a wholly owned subsidiary, will lead the conglomerate’s AI-driven initiatives. These efforts will focus on four main areas — infrastructure (creating gigawatt-scale, AI-ready data centres), partnerships (working with global technology leaders to bring innovative AI solutions to India), services (designing AI-powered offerings for Indian consumers, businesses, and industries such as education, healthcare, and agriculture), and talent (developing and training India’s AI workforce).
Morgan Stanley noted that Reliance has consistently reinvented its business every decade, and its entry into AI is poised to redefine its long-term growth story.
The report highlighted that AI deployment enables large-scale capital allocation and can unlock synergies across Reliance’s diverse operations, including energy, digital, consumer, and media businesses.
Morgan Stanley estimated that Reliance would spend about $12–15 billion to build a 1GW data centre, funding roughly 25% of the capacity itself. This would include about $7 billion for the physical data centre infrastructure and $5 billion for approximately 250MW of processing chips.
The rest of the capacity, according to the report, is likely to be leased out to major technology firms and language model providers through a “Datacenter as a Service” model.
The initial phase of this large-scale project has already begun in Jamnagar, Gujarat.
Reliance plans to utilize the first 100MW of its generative AI data centre capacity over the next two years to meet enterprise-level demand. This effort forms part of its broader enterprise solutions and Sovereign AI initiatives, supported by collaborations with Meta, Google, and Microsoft Azure.
Recently, Reliance announced a new AI joint venture with Meta’s subsidiary, Facebook Overseas, Inc, named Reliance Enterprise Intelligence Ltd (REIL). The partners have committed an initial investment of ₹855 crore, with Reliance Intelligence holding 70% and Facebook Overseas 30%.
This partnership aims to integrate Meta’s open-source Llama models with Reliance’s extensive business network to build and deliver enterprise AI services tailored for Indian companies.
Reliance is also working with Google to create a dedicated cloud region in Jamnagar, combining Reliance’s infrastructure strength with Google’s AI and cloud technologies. Morgan Stanley expects an 11% return on capital employed (ROCE) from the initial investments and estimates annual revenues of around $1.5–1.6 million per MW under the “Datacenter as a Service” model. It also noted that, since data centres are major power consumers, Reliance could generate over 20GW of internal energy demand, supporting 100GW of its solar panel production and 30–40GWh of battery capacity.
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