India’s artificial intelligence infrastructure is entering a new phase as large enterprises move beyond software into compute-heavy, physical AI assets. Against a backdrop of rising AI adoption, cloud demand, and government-backed digital public infrastructure, private players are now investing in large-scale data centres to localise AI workloads within India.
This week, Reliance Jio, the digital arm of Reliance Industries, announced plans to build India’s largest AI data centre and launch a new AI platform in Gujarat. The announcement was made by Mukesh Ambani, signalling a long-term push to anchor AI compute capacity within the country.
The proposed facility will support high-performance AI workloads, including large-scale data processing, model training, and enterprise AI services. Alongside the data centre, Jio plans to roll out a “people-first” AI platform aimed at enabling AI usage across Indian languages and devices, with a focus on affordability and accessibility. The project forms part of Reliance’s broader multi-year investment roadmap in Gujarat, spanning digital infrastructure, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing.
Reliance Jio has built its scale by combining telecom infrastructure with cloud, platforms, and consumer digital services. With over 450 million users, Jio’s ecosystem provides a ready base for deploying AI-driven applications across sectors such as retail, healthcare, education, and governance.
From a market perspective, this move intensifies competition in India’s data centre and cloud ecosystem, currently dominated by global hyperscalers and domestic infrastructure players. Large AI-ready facilities can reduce latency, lower dependence on overseas compute, and support India-specific datasets and compliance needs.
Over the long term, such investments could reshape how AI startups and enterprises access compute resources, especially as India pushes for data localisation and sovereign digital capabilities.
Founder takeaway: As AI shifts from experimentation to infrastructure-led scale, access to local, affordable compute will increasingly shape product strategy, costs, and speed to market for Indian startups.
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