Meta indicators first AI knowledge heart deal in India with Reliance

As tech firms race to safe the computing energy wanted to coach and deploy AI programs, Meta is making its first AI infrastructure guess in India, hanging an information heart partnership with conglomerate Reliance Industries in a market that’s quickly rising as a hub for AI infrastructure.

The partnership, introduced on Wednesday, will see Meta collaborate with Reliance on a 168-megawatt AI-enabled knowledge heart in Jamnagar, Gujarat, increasing a relationship that has advanced from Meta’s multibillion-dollar funding in Reliance’s Jio Platforms to a $100 million three way partnership launched final yr to develop enterprise AI options for patrons in India and abroad markets.

The deal comes as India cements its standing as a pure vacation spot for AI infrastructure investments, with tech giants in search of new geographies for knowledge facilities amid hovering demand for computing energy to coach and deploy AI fashions. Firms together with Microsoft, Amazon, Google, OpenAI, and Uber have lately introduced AI and cloud infrastructure investments within the nation, which has quickly expanded its knowledge heart footprint lately.

The frenzy into India extends past world expertise companies. Earlier this week, Blackstone-backed AirTrunk introduced plans to make investments $30 billion to construct 5 gigawatts of information heart capability within the nation by 2030, whereas Indian conglomerates together with Adani and Tata Consultancy Providers have additionally unveiled main knowledge heart enlargement plans geared toward supporting AI workloads.

New Delhi has sought to draw such investments via coverage incentives, together with tax exemptions via 2047 for overseas cloud suppliers on providers bought abroad, as long as these workloads are run from Indian knowledge facilities.

India’s put in knowledge heart capability has risen from about 375 megawatts in 2020 to round 1.5 gigawatts in 2025, in line with authorities knowledge. Trade estimates venture that determine might develop greater than fivefold to over 8 gigawatts by the top of the last decade, pushed by cloud adoption, AI workloads, and rising demand for native knowledge processing.

The Meta-Reliance settlement marks the newest chapter in a relationship that has steadily deepened since Meta invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms in 2020. Since then, the businesses have expanded their collaboration throughout digital providers, enterprise AI, and now the infrastructure underpinning next-generation AI programs.

As a part of the partnership, Meta is leasing capability at Reliance’s new Jamnagar facility, which the businesses mentioned will probably be powered by renewable power and cooled utilizing desalinated seawater. Meta has dedicated to overlaying all the price of the power and water required to help its operations there.

Reliance mentioned the 168-megawatt facility will prepared inside two years and might be expanded over time. Additional, the info heart will even help Meta’s world infrastructure and AI computing necessities, plugging India extra instantly into the corporate’s worldwide community of AI amenities.

Beneath the settlement, Reliance mentioned it might present end-to-end providers starting from design and development to renewable energy, connectivity, and ongoing operations, an indication of the conglomerate’s ambitions to grow to be a one-stop store for AI infrastructure amongst world expertise firms.

Individually, Meta mentioned it had contracted almost 1 gigawatt of latest renewable power capability in India via agreements with CleanMax and Fourth Companion Power, which can complement the renewable energy supporting the Jamnagar facility.

The businesses didn’t disclose the worth of the settlement, the kind of AI workloads that can run from the ability, or whether or not Meta plans extra AI infrastructure investments in India.