Reliance Industries’ USD 17 bn data centre opens investment window for Gulf investors

Reliance Industries plans to invest INR 1.6 tn (USD 17 bn) to build a 1.5 GW data centre cluster in southern India’s Visakhapatnam, accompanied by a captive renewable energy and battery storage system, The Economic Times reports, citing unnamed sources.

What we know: The “giga-scale AI data center” is expected to be India’s largest data center development. It will be developed in phases, launching with a 500 MW facility by October 2028 before scaling to 1 GW and ultimately reaching 1.5 GW by 2030.

Data hub taking shape: Visakhapatnam in southern India is emerging as a major data infrastructure hub, with global players like Google and other operators planning large-scale facilities. The state aims to build 6 GW of data center capacity, supported by incentives such as tax reimbursements and subsidies.

Why it matters: Gulf sovereign wealth funds — including the Public Investment Fund, Mubadala, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority — have poured significant capital into Jio Platforms. Reliance’s pivot toward a 1.5 GW data center cluster provides these investors with a high-capacity follow-on vehicle to deploy capital into the AI infrastructure layer, rather than just the conglomerate’s consumer and telecom segments.

Reliance will invest heavily in a 9k MW solar capacity project to power the cluster, addressing rising energy demands from AI and cloud infrastructure. By building its own 9 GW solar ecosystem, Reliance can avoid the local grid’s limitations and insulate its operations from power price volatility — a cost advantage Google and other hyperscalers will find hard to match without similar utility-scale investments.

IN CONTEXT- Reliance is separately developing a 1 GW compute hub near its Jamnagar oil refinery complex in Gujarat with Google and Meta.