Billionaire Ambani faucets Google, Meta to construct India’s AI spine

Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and chairman of Reliance Industries, has unveiled an ambitious plan to build the country’s AI backbone through a new subsidiary — starting with strategic partnerships with Google Cloud and Meta.

At the company’s 48th annual general meeting on Friday, Ambani launched a new venture called Reliance Intelligence, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries. The new venture aims to create a national-scale AI infrastructure, including enterprise tools and services for a variety of sectors. The move comes as India looks to catch up in the global AI race long dominated by the U.S. and China.

“Reliance Intelligence will create a home for world-class researchers, engineers, designers, and product builders, combining the speed of research with the rigor of engineering,” Ambani said in his keynote, “so that ideas become innovations and applications, providing solutions to India and the world.”

To kick things off, Reliance has partnered with Google — one of its major tech partners — to build a dedicated AI cloud infrastructure in India. The network will start with a major data center in Jamnagar, a city in the western state of Gujarat.

The dedicated cloud region will enable Reliance to offer AI-focused services to businesses of all sizes, developers, and government bodies, utilizing Jio’s network and its own energy assets to support large-scale deployments, the companies said in their joint statement.

“As Reliance’s largest public cloud partner, Google Cloud is not only powering the company’s mission-critical workloads, but we are also innovating with you on advanced AI initiatives,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a video message during the company’s virtual AGM. “This is only the beginning.”

Google did not immediately respond to a query about the financial terms of the partnership.

Reliance has also announced a joint venture with Meta, another of its major tech investors, to build and scale enterprise AI solutions for customers in India and select international markets. Under the agreement, Reliance and Meta have committed a combined investment of ₹8.55 billion (approximately $100 million) under a 70:30 ownership split, respectively.

The partnership will offer Meta’s Llama-based enterprise AI platform-as-a-service, allowing businesses to customize, deploy, and manage generative AI models for use cases across sales, marketing, IT, customer service, and finance. The joint venture will also provide a suite of pre-configured AI solutions, the companies said.

Reliance’s collaboration comes just weeks after Meta restructured its AI ventures into a new Superintelligence Labs, fueled by an expensive string of top AI hires. (Meta has reportedly pausing the hiring spree after concern from shareholders.)

“Through this joint venture, we’re putting Meta’s Llama models into real-world use,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement.

The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Reliance is planning to expand beyond India and take its flagship subsidiary, Reliance Jio Platforms to international markets, Ambani said. Ambani also revealed that Jio aims to file for an initial public offering in the first half of 2026, following much anticipation and initial delays.

Reliance is also reportedly eyeing a partnership with OpenAI, which recently introduced its sub-$5 ChatGPT subscription in India and announced its plans to set up an office in New Delhi later this year. The details of the partnership are likely to be announced during Sam Altman’s upcoming visit to India next month, two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

Reliance and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this year, Reliance’s arch-rival Bharti Airtel, the country’s second-largest telco after Jio, partnered with Perplexity to offer more than 360 million Airtel subscribers access to Perplexity Pro for 12 months.

Reliance has already partnered with Microsoft to offer its Azure cloud platform to Indian enterprises. The company also offers JioAICloud, a consumer-focused service that provides 100GB of free storage. The consumer cloud service has been used by 40 million users and is updated with voice search support and an AI Create Hub to turn photos into AI-powered reels, collages, and promo videos, the company announced at its annual general meeting.

Reliance also showcased its AI-based smart glasses, JioFrames, as its answer to Snap’s Spectacles and Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Similarly, the company is integrating AI into its streaming platform, JioHotstar, which has attracted over 600 million users and 300 million paying subscribers in the three months since its launch in February.

The new AI features include “Riya” voice assistant and content translation into Indian languages using AI-voice cloning and lip-syncing tech.