Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Forges AI Deals With Google, Meta As Its Mobile Carrier Jio Gears Up For IPO

Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd., right, with his son Akash Ambani, chairman of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., visit a company’s stall at India Mobile Congress 2022 in New Delhi, India, on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022.

© 2022 Bloomberg Finance LP

Reliance Industries—the energy-to-telecoms conglomerate controlled by Asia’s richest person Mukesh Ambani—signed deals with Meta and Google to develop AI platforms in India as its mobile carrier Reliance Jio prepares for a mega IPO next year.

Speaking at the company’s shareholders meeting on Friday, Ambani said that the company is making the arrangements for Jio’s IPO and aiming to list India’s largest wireless carrier by the first half of 2026.

“I assure you that this will demonstrate that Jio is capable of creating the same quantum of value like our global counterparts,” Ambani told shareholders. “I am sure that it will be a very attractive opportunity for all investors.”

Ambani said Reliance is also developing AI applications as a new growth engine. The push into AI will be spearheaded by a newly created unit Reliance Intelligence, which would develop India’s next-generation AI infrastructure and build a gigawatt-scale data center in Jamnagar, a coastal town in the western Indian state of Gujarat.

To support its ambition for the development of AI, Reliance has teamed up with U.S. tech giants Google and Meta. Reliance and Meta will invest 8.5 billion rupees ($96 million) in a joint venture to develop Meta’s open-source Llama AI platform for businesses in India and other markets.

“Through this joint venture, we’re putting Meta’s Llama models into real-world use, and I’m looking forward to Meta expanding its footprint in the enterprise space as we unlock new possibilities together,” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta said.

Separately, Reliance will collaborate with Alphabet’s Google to deploy Google’s AI technologies at its Jamnagar data center hub. The partnership aims to apply AI across Reliance’s businesses.

With an estimated net worth of $120 billion, Ambani is India’s wealthiest person, according to Forbes Asia’s list of India’s 100 Richest, published in October 2024. He is the chairman of Reliance Industries, which has interests in energy, petrochemicals, telecommunications, retail, media and financial services.