WHAT'S HAPPENING?
The businessman of big things is back at doing what he does best building mega scale projects.
Reliance industries chairman Mukesh Ambani plans to build the world's largest data centre at Jamnagar in Gujarat.
Jamnagar's previous claim to fame is the world's biggest oil refinery which was built by Mukesh's father, Dhirubhai Ambani, more than 25 years ago.
Therefore Jamnagar will bookend the astounding evolution of a fossil fuel business Empire to a deep- tech clean energy giant.
Now Mukesh Ambani's ambitious plan in making another world- beating bet on a sunrise sector.
To put Ambani's ambitious plan in perspective the largest data centres today are under 1 gigawatt capacity while Ambani is aiming at a capacity of 3 gigawatts.
His data centre will also triple India's total data centre capacity today.
Growing digitalisation of economy, spread of e-commerce and local data storage rules are among main reasons why India needs more and bigger data centres.
Ambani's plan will give India what it just needs today: infrastructure support to scale up AI technology and generative AI which require more computing power.
To support this ambitious move, Reliance is procuring advanced AI semiconductors from Nvidia corporation.
WHY IS RELIANCE ENTERING THIS SECTOR?
The Jamnagar data centre which will sit besides the oil refinery, will be a symbol of Reliance morphing into a deep- tech company from being an old- world smokestack giant.
While earlier he used to say data is the new oil this time he spoke of transforming Reliance into a deep- tech company.
SO WHAT RELIANCE IS DOING TO ACHIEVE THIS?
Ambani explain how his company is building deep-tech innovation as an engine for business growth.
"Reliance spent over ₹ 3,643 crore ($437 million) in financial year 2024 towards R&D, taking our spend on research to over ₹11,000 crore ($1.5 billion) in the last four years alone.
We have more than 1000 scientist and researchers working on critical research projects across all our business," he said.
"I feel proud to inform you that last year Reliance filed over 2,555 patents, mainly in the areas of bio- energy innovations, solar and other green energy sources, and high value chemicals.
Digital is another principal area of our in- house research.
We have filed patterns in 6G, 5G, AI- Large Language Models, AI- Deep Learning, BIG data, Devices, IoT and Narrowband-IoT.
I assure you that this on going take- driven transformation of Reliance will propel the company into a new orbit of hyper-growth and multiply its value for years to come," Ambani added.
WHY IT IS CRUCIAL FOR INDIA?
Ambani's plan comes when US President Donald Trump has announced a private sector investment of up to $500 billion to found (Stargate) infrastructure for artificial intelligence, aiming to outpace rival nations in the business- critical technology.
Ambani's Jamnagar Data Centre would cost between $20 billion and $30 billion as per the Bloomberg report.
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