Reliance Industries has pledged to invest ₹10 lakh crore (trillion) in the next seven years as chairman Mukesh Ambani unveiled an ambitious roadmap to put Jio at the core of India’s artificial intelligence (AI) journey.

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit, Ambani said the investment would be spread out over the next seven years, starting in 2026, joining the global rush in building AI infrastructure, including other Indian conglomerates such as Adani and the Tatas.

The investment, to be made by Reliance and Jio together, is not to be guided by profit motive alone, the chairman said.

“This is not speculative investment. It is not for chasing valuation. This is patient, disciplined, nation-building capital — designed to create durable economic value and strategic resilience for decades to come,” Ambani said.

According to Ambani, Jio would use the same playbook for AI as it did to drive down the cost of data in India.

“India cannot afford to rent intelligence. Therefore, we will reduce the cost of intelligence as dramatically as we did the cost of data,” Ambani said at the event, attended by CEOs and founders of top AI enterprises such as Sundar Pichai of Google parent Alphabet, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic among others.

According to the plan unveiled by the RIL chairman, Jio intelligence will build India’s sovereign compute infrastructure through three initiatives, even as Ambani has been talking about RIL’s plunge into AI from 2024 onwards.

The company will build gigawatt scale data centres nationwide. “We have already started construction on multi-gigawatt, AI-ready data-centres at Jamnagar. Over 120 MW will come online in the second half of 2026,” he said.

One of the data centres is likely to come up in Calcutta as Jio has a 40-acre plot in Rajarhat’s Silicon Valley Hub. Sources said initial work on the project has started.

Ambani said the data centres would be powered by green energy, allaying fears that AI infrastructure will guzzle fossil fuels and ramp up India’s carbon footprint.

“We have an in-house energy advantage with up to 10 GW of ready green-power surplus, anchored by solar in both Kutch and Andhra Pradesh,” the RIL chairman informed.

Moreover, RIL will integrate Jio’s network with an edge compute layer making “intelligence responsive, low-latency and affordable”.

“Our resolve is clear: make intelligence as ubiquitous as connectivity. When compute become infrastructure, innovation will become inevitable,” he said.

Job loss fears

Assuaging widespread fears that the advent of AI will wipe out white collar roles, Ambani said, “We will prove that AI doesn’t take away jobs. Rather it will create new high-skill opportunities.”

Reliance will work with India’s leading industrial groups to embed AI across manufacturing, logistics, energy, finance, retail, agriculture and health-care, he added.

Moreover, the company also plans to forge partnerships with top educational institutions such as IITs, IISc.

“The AI story has shifted from “Who has the best model” to “Who can build the strongest ecosystem for speed and scale of usage,” he said.