Meta partners with Ambani-owned Reliance to build AI data center in India

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced on Wednesday that it has formed a partnership with Reliance Industries, owned by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, to establish the first artificial intelligence-enabled data center in India for the United States-based corporation.It is the first artificial intelligence-enabled data center in India, and it is owned by Reliance Industries (RELI.NS), which is owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani.

According to the announcement, Reliance is going to construct a data center in Jamnagar, which is located in the western state of Gujarat in India, with a capacity of 168 megawatts (MW). Meta will lease this data center, and there will be options to scale it up.
According to Meta, India is recognised as a desirable location for investment due to its rapidly expanding digital economy and enormous user base.

According to IMARC Group, a consulting organization, the data center market in India is expected to nearly quadruple to reaching $13.11 billion by the year 2034. This growth is expected to be driven by digital transformation, cloud adoption, and increased artificial intelligence workloads.

With the formation of a joint venture in August of the previous year, Meta and Reliance collaborated to develop artificial intelligence (AI) platforms and solutions for businesses in India, utilising Meta’s Llama models. The initial investment of 8.55 billion rupees ($89.67 million) had been jointly pledged by Reliance and Meta, with the proportions being 70 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

In the year 2020, Meta made a payment of $5.7 billion to Jio Platforms, which is a subsidiary of Reliance.
$1 is equivalent to 95.3500 Indian rupees.