Mukesh Ambani bets big on AI with $15-bn data push

New Delhi: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) may spend about $12-15 billion over the next few years on AI infrastructure that could include a giant 1GW data centre, Morgan Stanley said in a report. Ambani had at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in August announced a major push into AI through a new subsidiary and strategic partnerships.

A new wholly-owned subsidiary, Reliance Intelligence will spearhead the conglomerate’s AI initiatives that will be centered around four pillars -- Infrastructure (building gigawatt-scale, AI-ready data centers), Partnerships (collaborating with global tech leaders to bring cutting-edge AI solutions to India), Services (developing AI-powered services tailored for Indian consumers, small businesses, and enterprises in sectors like education, healthcare, and agriculture) and Talent (investing in upskilling and nurturing India’s AI workforce).

Reliance has re-invented itself every decade, and AI is set to reshape its equity story, Morgan Stanley said in the report. Gen AI deployment enables large-scale capital deployment, while unlocking value through synergies across energy, digital, consumer, and media verticals.

“We estimate that Reliance will spend approximately $12-15 billion on AI infrastructure to develop a 1GW datacenter, underwriting about 25 per cent of the capacity itself (roughly $7 billion for datacenter infrastructure and $5 billion for the 250MW of chips the company will deploy directly),” it said. It is expected that the remaining capacity will be leased to hyperscalers and LLM providers as ‘Datacenter as a Service’. The first phase of the data centre is already underway in Jamnagar, Gujarat. “We believe Reliance can utilize its initial 100MW of Gen AI datacenter capacity - which it has indicated will scale up over two years - to address inference demand from enterprises, as part of its enterprise stack offering and Sovereign AI initiatives,” it said.