On a day when the broader market was in retreat, Jio Platforms delivered the kind of debut not many investors would have expected. The stock listed at ₹1,358, 21 percent above its issue price and closed its first day 27 percent higher. That valued the company at more than ₹13 lakh crore ($131 billion), making it India’s second-most valuable listed firm, behind its parent Reliance Industries. The ₹30,213-crore issue, India’s largest, was oversubscribed 22 times.
The IPO’s success under broader downward pressure partly shows the market’s faith in telecom operators being an essential part in India’s next investment phase spanning AI services, cloud computing and data centres. Jio is positioning itself as a technology platform that happens to own a telecom network, and investors appear to have bought into that narrative.
But even as the euphoria surrounding Jio’s IPO continues, global investors are looking past it to the much bigger offering of Anthropic, expected later this year or early next. The comparison is sobering. The San Francisco-headquartered maker of Claude AI models filed on October 26 to list on Nasdaq. Its prospectus shows revenue of $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, nearly 13 times the year-earlier level. Analysts expect the company to command a valuation of $1.2-2 trillion, several times Jio’s. OpenAI, valued at a similar level to Anthropic’s, is also expected to list by 2027.
The contrast highlights where global capital is flowing. Investors are backing companies building AI software and hardware, particularly in the US, Taiwan and South Korea. India has few listed companies operating at the core of this ecosystem, leaving its equity market vulnerable to foreign investors selling local holdings to fund bets elsewhere. Despite the growing concern over an AI financing bubble, foreign portfolio investors withdrew a record ₹3.08 lakh crore from Indian equities in the first nine months of 2026, nearly twice the outflow recorded in all of 2025.
Jio’s listing proves the depth of domestic investor appetite for a credible growth story. But India needs to offer global investors more than connectivity and affordable data. Until Indian companies secure a meaningful share of the AI value chain, from computing infrastructure and models to chips, investors may only get to celebrate successes at home that are dwarfed by listings abroad.