Mukesh Ambani's Reliance makes Rs 10 lakh cr audacious bet on India's AI prowess

Making one of the biggest commitments to artificial intelligence yet, Mukesh Ambani on Thursday announced that Reliance Industries and Jio will jointly invest Rs 10 lakh crore in AI infrastructure and innovation over the next seven years. Speaking at the AI Impact Summit 2026, Ambani called it a “bold but necessary” move to ensure India becomes a leading force in the global AI revolution.

“This is not speculative investment,” he declared.

He said, “India will emerge as one of the greatest AI powers in the world in the 21st century. My confidence is validated by an undeniable truth. In the coming decades, no country in the world can match India’s strength in demography, democracy, development, digital infrastructure, data generation, and AI harvest.”

Building India’s ‘intelligence economy’

At the heart of Ambani’s vision lies Jio Intelligence, a new initiative to create India’s sovereign AI compute infrastructure. The project will unfold through three major efforts.

“First, gigawatt-scale data centres. We have already started constructing multi-gigawatt AI-ready data centres at Jamnagar. Over 120 megawatts will come online in the second half of 2026, paving a clear path to gigawatt-scale compute for AI training and large-scale inference,” Ambani explained.

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“Second, our green energy advantage. We have up to 10 gigawatts of ready green power. Third, a nationwide edge compute layer. Deeply integrated with Jio’s network, it will make AI responsive, low-latency, and affordable close to where Indians live, learn, and work,” he said.

Ambani emphasised that “India cannot afford to rent intelligence.” Drawing parallels to Jio’s earlier telecom disruption, he promised that Reliance would “reduce the cost of intelligence as dramatically as we did the cost of data.”

JioHotstar partners with OpenAI

JioHotstar and OpenAI have announced a landmark partnership that brings ChatGPT-powered voice discovery to India’s largest streaming destination. The integration introduces multilingual, conversational search, allowing users to simply speak their intent or mood to receive smart, context-aware recommendations, replacing endless scrolling with intuitive, human-like discovery.

Viewers can ask for suggestions such as “something to watch with my parents” or “movies about identical twins,” and the assistant will interpret cultural nuance and context to offer personalised results.

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The rollout will begin with select formats and later expand across all experiences, including integration within ChatGPT itself, enabling users to discover JioHotstar content directly from AI conversations.

The Akshay Patra of the digital age

Calling AI “the mantra that powers every yantra,” Ambani likened the technology to the mythical Akshay Patra, the vessel from the Mahabharata that provided endless nourishment. “I see AI as a modern-day Akshay Patra, the legendary vessel that provided endless nourishment to all. Likewise, AI offers limitless augmentation in knowledge, efficiency, and productivity. We are only at the dawn of this era. The best of AI is yet to come.”

He also underscored that the real bottleneck in AI isn’t talent but compute power, pointing to the scarcity and high cost of processing infrastructure worldwide.

Ambani’s remarks came alongside a reminder of India’s digital achievements, Aadhaar’s 1.4 billion digital IDs, UPI’s 12 billion monthly transactions, and a startup ecosystem boasting over 100,000 ventures and 100 unicorns. “In terms of quality, there is no difference between Delhi and the remotest Indian village,” he noted proudly.

Ambani’s speech carried both optimism and warning. “Today, the world is debating a profound question, will AI concentrate power in the hands of a few, or will it democratise opportunity for all?” he asked.

“Our polarised world stands at a fork. One path has led to a situation where AI is scarce and expensive, compute is concentrated, data is controlled, and capability is locked behind barriers of capital and geography in the global north.”