NEW DELHI: Reliance Jio on Thursday announced that it will invest ₹10 lakh crore over the next seven years, starting this year, for AI development in India.
Mukesh Ambani, while speaking at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, said that 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 ₹10 lakh crores over the next seven years starting this year. This is not 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,” said Ambani.
He said that the biggest constraint in AI today is not talent or imagination but the scarcity and high cost of compute. The company’s AI vertical, Jio Intelligence, will build India’s sovereign compute infrastructure through three bold initiatives: One — Gigawatt-Scale Data Centres; Two — India’s Green Energy Advantage; and Three — A Nationwide Edge Compute.
He said the company has already started construction on multi-gigawatt, AI-ready data centres at Jamnagar. Over 120 MW will come online in the second half of 2026, with a clear path to gigawatt-scale compute for training and large-scale inference. The company said an 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.
He also mentioned that the company will prove that AI does not take away jobs. Rather, it will create new high-skill work opportunities. He said the AI story has shifted from “Who has the best model” to “Who can build the strongest ecosystem for speed and scale of usage.”
Therefore, the company will build a deep partnership ecosystem with Indian enterprises, startups, IITs, IISc and research institutions. It will work shoulder-to-shoulder with India’s leading industrial groups to embed AI across manufacturing, logistics, energy, finance, retail, agriculture and healthcare. It will empower startups with affordable compute and co-development platforms.
The company aspires to produce global breakthroughs in compute architecture, foundation models and energy efficiency — designed in India, rooted in its values, powered by its talent, and scaled for humanity.
He also mentioned that India will emerge as one of the greatest AI powers in the world in the 21st century. Ambani said Artificial Intelligence is not just another technology, but for the first time humans are creating human-like systems that can learn, speak, analyse, move and produce autonomously. He said AI is the mantra that powers every yantra, or every machine and system, to work faster, better and smarter.