Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Group plans to build a 3-gigawatt data center in Jamnagar. The project, worth up to $30 billion, could be the world’s largest AI data center.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group is building what could be the world’s largest data center by capacity in India, the latest in a series of global investments aimed at capitalizing on the growing demand for AI, Bloomberg reported.
Details
The 67-year-old billionaire is buying high-powered artificial intelligence semiconductors from Nvidia Corp. and building a data center in the city of Jamnagar that is expected to have a total capacity of three gigawatts, according to people familiar with the matter. This will be much larger than any of the currently operating data centers.
Ambani joins a growing group of technology companies, including Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., that are investing billions of dollars in data centers to bring artificial intelligence capabilities to customers around the world. This week, OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp. and Oracle Corp. pledged to invest $100 billion to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the United States through a new organization called the Stargate Project.
A Reliance spokesman declined to comment, citing a recent speech by Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. CEO Akash Ambani, Mukesh’s son. The executive said the conglomerate is building a data center that is expected to be completed within two years. “We want to complete it in Jamnagar style in record time – as we have always done in Jamnagar – in 24 months,” he said.
Ambani’s project, if it goes ahead as planned, is notable for its sheer size. According to data provided by market intelligence firm DC Byte, the largest data centers currently in operation are less than 1 gigawatt, so the plans are several times larger than what’s on the market.
The capacity of a data center is often measured in megawatts of electricity, which can be fed to servers, cooling systems and other equipment. The higher the number, the more computing power it can support. And AI models are notoriously computationally demanding.
It’s unclear how Ambani will pay for the project, which could cost between $20 billion and $30 billion, based on spending in the region on such facilities. Reliance Industries Ltd., the group's parent listed company, has the equivalent of about $26 billion on its balance sheet.
The Jamnagar facility will significantly increase India’s data center capacity, which is currently estimated at less than 1 gigawatt. A tripling of that capacity would give the densely populated country the potential to significantly accelerate the development of artificial intelligence.
The city is becoming increasingly important to the conglomerate’s plans, which include a shift to renewable energy. Reliance said it is building a giant green energy complex covering more than 2,000 hectares, with plants to manufacture photovoltaic panels, fuel cell systems, green hydrogen, energy storage and wind turbines.
Reliance is aiming to power the new data center with as much renewable energy as possible, the people said. It will be adjacent to Reliance Group’s ongoing projects that will produce solar, wind and green hydrogen energy, one of the people said.
However, it is virtually impossible to provide a continuous and reliable flow of solar and wind power without more permanent resources such as nuclear reactors, fossil fuel-fired power plants or extremely large battery systems to back it up.
Addition
The world’s largest data centers by capacity are currently located in the US and owned by tech giants. According to DC Byte, Microsoft's Boydton, Virginia, plant is the largest with nearly 600 megawatts of capacity, with another 112 megawatts under construction. It is followed by Google and Meta Platforms Inc.