New Delhi, Feb 19 (UNI) Mukesh Ambani on Thursday announced that Reliance Industries and its digital arm Jio will invest Rs10 lakh crore over the next seven years to drive India’s artificial intelligence transformation strategy, spanning sovereign compute infrastructure, green energy and AI applications.
Addressing the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in the national capital, Ambani said, “Jio will now connect India to the intelligence era… India cannot afford to rent intelligence. Therefore, we will reduce the cost of intelligence as dramatically as we did the cost of data.”
“Jio, together with Reliance, will invest Rs 10 lakh crore over the next seven years starting this year. This is not a speculative investment. It is not for chasing valuation. This is patient, disciplined, nation-building capital designed to create durable economic value and strategic resilience for decades to come,” he said.
Announcing a three-part strategy to transition India from the internet era to the intelligence era, Ambani said, “Announcement one: Jio connected India to the internet era. Jio will now connect India to the intelligence era. We will deliver intelligence to every citizen, every sector of the economy, and every facet of social development and every service of government.”
“Jio, together with Reliance, will invest Rs 10 lakh crore over the next seven years starting this year. Third announcement, Jio Intelligence will build India’s sovereign compute infrastructure through three bold initiatives,” he added.
Elaborating about his plan, Ambani said the first pillar would be “gigawatt-scale data centers,” adding, “We already started construction on multi-gigawatt AI-ready data centers at Jamnagar. Over 120 megawatts will come online in the second half of 2026; with a clear path to gigawatt-scale capacity for training.”
The second pillar leverages Reliance’s clean energy portfolio. “We have an in-house energy advantage with up to 10 gigawatts of ready green power surplus anchored by solar in both Kutch and Andhra Pradesh,” he said.
The third initiative focuses on a distributed edge network. “A nationwide edge compute layer deeply integrated with Jio’s network will make intelligence responsive, low latency, and affordable, close to where Indians live, learn, and work,” Ambani said.
Noting that the biggest constraint in AI today is “not talent or innovation, rather it is scarcity and high cost of compute,” he reiterated, “India cannot afford to rent intelligence.”
Ambani said the broader goal is to make intelligence “as ubiquitous as connectivity,” guided by principles aimed at enabling deep-tech innovation, advanced manufacturing, agriculture and the informal sector.
He also introduced “Jio AI Bharat,” a multilingual AI capability across Indian languages to enable farmers, artisans and students to interact with technology in their mother tongues. Emphasising employment potential, he said, “AI will not take jobs but will create jobs and AI will create high-skilled work opportunities,” adding that the company “will partner with the best tech companies of the world.”
“India will emerge as one of the greatest AI powers in the world in the 21st century,” Ambani said, citing the country’s strengths in demography, democracy and data.
