• Jio’s parent, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), is forming an enterprise AI joint venture with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta
• The partners will use Meta’s Llama models and Jio’s digital infrastructure to offer a range of generic and tailored AI services and applications 

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), the parent company of India’s leading telco Reliance Jio, has teamed up with Meta to form a joint venture that will develop enterprise AI platforms and tools for businesses of all types and sizes across India as well as “select international markets”. 

The partners will jointly invest an initial 8.55bn rupees ($96.8m) in the venture, in which RIL will hold a 70% stake and Meta 30%, RIL noted in this announcement, which coincided with RIL's latest annual general meeting. The joint venture will play a key role in Reliance Intelligence, the new RIL division that was announced by RIL chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani during the AGM.

The venture will use Meta’s open-source Llama (large language model Meta AI) to give enterprises access to an AI platform-as-a-service (PaaS) platform that will enable them to “customise, deploy and govern generative AI [GenAI] models for specific use cases”. 

It will also develop a “suite of pre-configured AI solutions designed to address both cross-functional and industry-specific use cases”. The solutions will be available from the venture’s own facilities, third-party cloud platforms or deployed by enterprise customers on their own servers.

According to RIL, access to the AI tools and services will be enabled by its “digital backbone to deliver enterprise‑grade AI at affordable price points for Indian enterprises and SMBs [small and medium businesses]”. That backbone will come courtesy of Reliance Jio, which as well as offering mobile services also boasts a portfolio of enterprise data connectivity solutions, including MPLS VPNs (virtual private networks), SD-WAN and leased lines. 

Ambani noted: “Partnering with Meta brings our vision of providing AI to every Indian and enterprise to life, by combining Meta’s most widely adopted open‑source Llama models with our deep expertise across multiple industries. We will democratise enterprise‑grade AI for every Indian organisation, from ambitious SMBs to blue‑chip corporates, enabling them to innovate faster, operate more efficiently and compete confidently on the global stage. RIL will also serve as a real‑world enterprise‑scale environment for deploying and refining the joint venture’s offerings, enabling rapid iteration and continuous improvement at scale.” 

Meta’s founder and CEO,  Mark Zuckerberg, added: “We’re excited to deepen our partnership with Reliance to bring the power of open‑source AI to Indian developers and enterprises. 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.”

The move fits with Ambani’s broader strategic ambitions for RIL. At the Indian conglomerate’s annual general meeting last year, he stated that “the true power of AI lies in making it accessible to everyone, everywhere… we are committed to democratising AI, offering powerful AI models and services to everyone in India at the most affordable prices.”

To help it achieve its AI goals, RIL is teaming up with Nvidia to roll out large-scale AI infrastructure in India. The AI chip giant will supply its graphics processing units (GPUs) for AI factories and a large datacentre that Reliance is building in the western state of Gujarat. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang discussed the deal with RIL chief Mukesh Ambani at Nvidia’s AI Summit in Mumbai last October.

The Gujarat datacentre, located near the city of Jamnagar, is, according to reports, a mammoth 3 gigawatt facility in Jamnagar that will cost up to $30bn to build and will be powered (in part, at least) by solar, wind and hydrogen energy from RIL’s New Energy division, according to Bloomberg. Ambani noted during the AGM that work has begun on the datacentre facilities in Jamnagar, but did not specify the investment or size of the datacentre cluster.  

RIL is already a stakeholder in datacentre operator Digital Connexion, a three-way joint venture with Brookfield Asset Management and Digital Realty that already has datacentre facilities up and running in Mumbai and Chennai. 

RIL and Meta will have plenty of competition, of course, as the likes of Bharti Airtel (courtesy of its sovereign cloud partnership with Google Cloud), Tech Mahindra, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro will all be looking to meet the AI needs of India’s B2B enterprise sector.   

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV