MUMBAI – In a seismic shift for the Indian technology landscape, Reliance Industries is moving beyond simple consumer chatbots, pivoting instead to control the foundational infrastructure of India’s burgeoning artificial intelligence economy. Following a major strategy unveiling at the company’s 49th Annual General Meeting, Reliance aims to replicate its transformative “Jio” playbook—this time by making AI a low-cost, accessible utility for the masses.
Central to this vision is “Reliance Intelligence,” a deep-tech unit currently constructing a sovereign AI backbone in Jamnagar, Gujarat. With the first 120-megawatt phase scheduled for completion by late 2026, the facility will be powered by Reliance’s own clean energy and equipped with a massive fleet of advanced NVIDIA GB300 GPUs. For Reliance, the goal is not merely to build the smartest model, but to provide the digital “highways and power grids” upon which the rest of the nation’s AI will run.
The Rise of Sovereign AI
This aggressive infrastructure push coincides with a growing consensus among Indian tech leaders that dependence on foreign AI platforms poses significant risks. Recent developments involving US-based Anthropic—and the subsequent impact of government-imposed curbs—have served as a “wake-up call” for the industry.
Vivek Raghavan, co-founder of the newly minted AI unicorn Sarvam, recently emphasized this shift. “It shows that access to these technologies cannot be taken for granted,” Raghavan noted, adding that domestic firms must fundamentally understand and control these systems to ensure long-term stability. Sarvam, which recently raised $234 million with support from HCLTech, is now focusing heavily on agentic AI and specialized models for coding and cybersecurity.
A Unified Infrastructure Push
Reliance’s strategy, led by Akash Ambani, focuses on three pillars: affordability, accessibility, and sovereign control. By providing an infrastructure stack that allows Indian enterprises, government services, and developers to retain full ownership of their data and models, Reliance is positioning itself as the primary partner for an AI-first India.
As major global players grapple with geopolitical and regulatory uncertainty, India’s domestic strategy is clear: bypass the middleman and build a localized ecosystem that is “AI for India, AI by India, and AI that will one day serve the world.” With massive data center investments and deep-tech partnerships with companies like Google and Meta, the race to own India’s AI future is now in full swing.
