Meta Platforms and Reliance Industries announced on Wednesday a deal for Reliance to build and lease Meta’s first AI-enabled data centre in India, a 168-megawatt facility in Jamnagar, Gujarat, extending a partnership that began with a $5.7 billion investment in Jio Platforms six years ago.
Under the agreement, Reliance will deliver the facility within two years, with an option to scale capacity. Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of Meta, said the Jamnagar site would “help us scale our AI infrastructure globally while deepening our long-term investment in India’s economy.” Financial terms were not disclosed.
The data centre will be powered by renewable energy and cooled with desalinated seawater, with Meta covering the full cost of energy and water. The company separately contracted nearly one gigawatt of new clean energy in India through agreements with CleanMax, for 837 megawatts of solar and wind projects in Rajasthan and Karnataka, and Fourth Partner Energy, for 88 megawatts across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh.
Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, described the agreement as “a transformative moment for India’s digital infrastructure,” adding that the project demonstrated India’s readiness to lead the global AI revolution.
The deal builds on a relationship that has evolved from Meta’s multibillion-dollar investment in Jio Platforms to a $100 million joint venture launched last year to develop enterprise AI solutions for customers in India and overseas. Jamnagar offers Reliance a structural advantage: the site sits within its flagship energy complex, giving the data centre ready access to power, water, and infrastructure.
The announcement arrives as India pushes to attract hyperscale investment with significant fiscal incentives. The Indian government has granted foreign companies a more than 20-year tax break on using local data centres. Reliance committed roughly $110 billion and Adani outlined $100 billion in investments earlier this year to position India as an AI hub.
India’s data centre market is projected to nearly double to $13.11 billion by 2034, fuelled by digitalisation, cloud adoption, and rising AI workloads, according to consulting firm IMARC Group. Global brokerage Nomura said in a 2 June report that India’s data centre capacity is expected to reach seven gigawatts by 2030, describing the market as cost-efficient relative to other developed Asia Pacific and Western markets.
