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Informist, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026

 

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--Mukesh Ambani: India to emerge as greatest AI power in 21st century 
--Mukesh Ambani: RJio to play even bigger role in India's AI transformation 
--CONTEXT: Comments by RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani at India AI Impact Summit 
--Mukesh Ambani: RJio to invest INR 10 tln over 7 yrs for AI transformation 
--Mukesh Ambani: To cut cost of AI dramatically for RJio users 
--Mukesh Ambani: See AI creating new high-skilled work opportunities 
--Mukesh Ambani: To partner with global cos for working on AI 

 

NEW DELHI – Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. will invest INR 10 trillion over the next seven years to power India's artificial intelligence transformation, Reliance Industries Ltd. Chairman Mukesh Ambani announced Thursday.

 

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit here, the RIL chairman said India is poised to emerge as the greatest AI power of the 21st century, backed by its digital infrastructure, talent pool, and entrepreneurial scale. He said Reliance Jio will play an even bigger role in accelerating AI adoption across sectors. "Jio, together with Reliance, will invest 10 lakh crores (INR 10 trillion) over the next seven years, starting this year," he said.

 

Calling the summit "a defining moment in India's tech history," Ambani said AI would be a key driver in realising the vision of a developed India by 2047. "AI is not just another technology," he said. "For the first time, humans are creating human-like systems that can learn, speak, analyse, move and produce automation." Describing AI as a "modern-day Akshay Patra," he said it offers "limitless augmentation in knowledge, efficiency and productivity" and could usher in "an era of super abundance" if deployed wisely.

 

Ambani framed the global AI debate as a choice between concentration and democratisation. "Will AI concentrate power in the hands of a few or will it democratise opportunity for all?" he asked, warning that a future where "AI is scarce and expensive, compute is concentrated, data is controlled and capability is locked behind barriers of capital and geography" would widen inequality. Instead, he advocated a path where AI is "available, affordable, and beneficial to all."

 

Emphasising that India will emerge as a global AI leader, Ambani highlighted the country's strengths – nearly 1 billion internet users, among the lowest data costs in the world, 1.4 billion digital identifications under Aadhaar, over 12 billion monthly UPI transactions, and a startup ecosystem comprising more than 100,000 startups and over 100 unicorns. He said Jio, with over 500 million subscribers, played "a leading role in this transformation across broadband, 4G (fourth-generation), 5G, and home connectivity," and would now "play an even bigger role in India's AI transformation."

 

Announcing the INR 10 trillion outlay for AI transformation, Ambani said this is "not speculative investment" but "patient, disciplined, nation-building capital designed to create durable economic value and strategic resilience for decades to come."

 

He added that the biggest hurdle for AI today is "scarcity and high cost of compute," not talent or imagination. To address this, Ambani outlined plans to build India's sovereign AI compute infrastructure through three initiatives – establishing gigawatt-scale AI-ready data centres, leveraging Reliance's green energy advantage, and deploying a nationwide edge compute layer integrated with Jio's network.

 

He said the company is working on launching an AI-ready data centre of 120-megawatt capacity in Jamnagar in the second half of this year, forming the foundation for a planned expansion to gigawatt-scale compute to support large-scale model training and inference. He added that the infrastructure will be powered by Reliance's in-house green energy advantage, with up to 10 GW of surplus renewable capacity, primarily solar, in Kutch, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. Complementing the core data centres, Jio will deploy a nationwide edge compute layer integrated into its telecom network to ensure low-latency, affordable AI access across urban and rural India.

 

On AI affordability, Ambani said, "India cannot afford to rent intelligence. Therefore, we will reduce the cost of intelligence as dramatically as we did the cost of data." He reiterated that Jio will "deliver intelligence to every citizen, every sector of the economy and every facet of social development," aiming to make AI as ubiquitous as connectivity.

 

Ambani said Jio Intelligence will be guided by five principles--advancing deep tech and manufacturing leadership, building multilingual AI capabilities across Indian languages, ensuring responsibility, security and data residency, creating high-skill employment, and fostering a strong ecosystem for speed and scale. "We will prove that AI does not take away jobs, rather it will create new high-skill work opportunities," he said.

 

He added that Jio will work closely with Indian enterprises, startups, the Indian Institutes of Technology, and research institutions, and collaborate with global technology leaders. "We will partner with the very best tech companies in the world, not as importers of intelligence, but as co-architects of a new AI century," Ambani said.

 

The RIL chairman also highlighted early AI applications launched by Jio across education, healthcare, agriculture, and everyday services, including AI-powered teaching assistants, medical guidance tools, and precision agriculture solutions. He said AI can enhance creativity, strengthen India's cultural presence globally, and empower citizens at scale. Concluding his address, he called for global cooperation over polarisation, stating that AI's true potential lies in "sharing, not hoarding, through collaborations, not conflicts," and urged stakeholders to "combine intelligence with empathy" to build a better future.  End

 

Reported by Pallavi Singhal and Krity Ambey

Edited by Tanima Banerjee

 

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