At the Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) annual general meeting, chairman Mukesh Ambani announced Reliance Intelligence, a new wholly owned subsidiary offering large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The billionaire entrepreneur said that Reliance Intelligence will make AI accessible for everyone, everywhere.
“A decade ago, digital services became a new growth engine for Reliance. Now, the opportunity before us with AI is just as large, if not larger. Jio promised and delivered digital everywhere and for every Indian. Similarly, Reliance Intelligence promises to deliver AI everywhere for every Indian,” Ambani said.
Under the new initiative, the company will build gigawatt-scale, AI-ready data centres that will be powered by green energy. Ambani said that these data centres will be engineered for training and inference at a national scale.
According to Ambani, Reliance Intelligence has been conceived with four missions – to host India’s next-generation AI infrastructure, to foster global partnerships, to build AI services for India, and to nurture AI talent.
The RIL chief said that work has already commenced on the gigawatt-scale, AI-ready data centres in Jamnagar. He said that the facilities will be delivered in phases aligned with India’s growing needs, powered by Reliance’s new energy ecosystem and custom-made AI for training and inferencing.
Besides, Reliance Intelligence will also foster global partnerships, bringing together big tech from across the world to open-source communities. Ambani said that the initiative will deliver trusted, easy-to-use AI services for consumers, small businesses, and enterprises, and solutions for sectors like education, healthcare, and agriculture. He asserted that the services will be reliable at scale and affordable for every Indian.
During the announcement, Ambani added that Reliance Intelligence will create a hub for world-class researchers, engineers, designers, and product builders. According to him, this will combine the speed of research with the rigour of engineering so that “ideas become innovations and applications, providing solutions to the world.”
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Why does it matter?
If done right, Reliance Intelligence could likely propel India as a global player in the AI arms race, especially when the US and China are pumping billions into massive AI infrastructure. Unlike many firms still experimenting with AI in India, RIL has the scale, capital, and ecosystem to leverage – especially from telecom networks and retail to cloud and data services, to build AI capabilities that could directly reach millions of consumers.
Considering it has access to vast troves of Indian-language data and infrastructure to process it domestically, RIL has an edge as the possibilities are limitless. Reliance is in a position to develop AI models trained on diverse Indian contexts that can address unique local needs, which most US or China-developed systems often lack.
At a time when the US and China battle for AI supremacy through data centres and chips, Reliance Intelligence can position India as more than just a consumer of AI and potentially a nation that could shape into a credible third hub of innovation.
(With inputs from PTI)