- Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance touches the lives of nearly everyone in India
- Reliance plans to build a 3GW data center in India, the largest in the world
- Ambani has pledged to use green and renewable energy to power this giga data center
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group, one of India’s largest and most influential conglomerates, is developing a large-scale data center in Jamnagar – a small town in Gujarat that’s already home to Reliance’s major oil refining and petrochemical operations.
Reports from Bloomberg claim the data center, which could become the world’s largest, is expected to reach a total capacity of 3 gigawatts, significantly boosting India’s current data center capacity, which is estimated at under 1 gigawatt.
That will make it five times the size of Microsoft’s 600 megawatts facility in Boydton, Virginia.
Operational by 2027
Nvidia will provide Reliance Group with the AI chips it needs for the project, which comes at a time when tech firms are investing heavily in AI infrastructure. In the US, OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle recently announced Project Stargate, a $500 billion investment venture, and Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Facebook that his company was earmarking a $65 billion capital expenditure spend in 2025 and “building a 2GW+ data center so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan.”
Reliance reportedly plans to power the facility primarily with renewable energy, integrating it with its existing solar, wind, and green hydrogen projects. However, Bloomberg believes achieving a stable energy supply may require backup from fossil fuels or other sources.
Although a Reliance spokesperson declined to provide further details on the Jamnagar project they did point Bloomberg to previous remarks from Mukesh Ambani’s son Akash, CEO of Reliance Jio Infocomm, who claimed the company aims to complete the data center within 24 months.
Headquartered in Mumbai, Reliance was founded by Dhirubhai Ambani in 1966 as a small textile business. Over the decades, it expanded into petrochemicals, refining, and other industries, and following Dhirubhai’s death in 2002, Mukesh took control of the company and led its transformation into a global powerhouse.
Despite the conglomerate’s success, it’s not clear how Reliance will fund the $20 billion to $30 billion the data center will reportedly cost. As Bloomberg notes, “Reliance Industries Ltd., the group’s primary listed entity, has the equivalent of about $26 billion on its balance sheet.”
