Meta strikes Reliance data center deal in India AI infrastructure push
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is partnering with Reliance Industries to build its first artificial intelligence data center in India, joining a massive wave of global technology capital flowing into the South Asian country’s computing infrastructure.
Under the agreement announced Wednesday, billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance will construct a 168-megawatt AI-enabled data center at its industrial hub in Jamnagar, Gujarat.
Meta will lease the entire capacity of the facility to power the backend systems of its primary applications, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, alongside its broader generative AI models.
Financial details of the lease were not disclosed, though the companies confirmed the contract includes provisions for future capacity expansion.
The transaction marks a significant deepening of a relationship that began in 2020 when Meta injected $5.7 billion into Reliance’s digital and telecom arm, Jio Platforms.
Since then, the alliance has expanded from basic consumer digital services to a $100 million enterprise AI joint venture established last year, culminating in this direct collaboration on the physical hardware necessary to support next-generation computing workloads.
The partnership underscores India’s rapid ascent as a primary geographic cluster for global data center construction.
Tech giants are increasingly scouting alternative markets for server space amid power constraints in Western markets and a synchronized race to deploy capital for AI training and inference.
Amazon.com and Microsoft have collectively targeted $52 billion in domestic infrastructure investments this year alone, while OpenAI recently finalized an infrastructure partnership with Tata Group to scale up to 1 gigawatt of capacity.
