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Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group is set to build one of the world’s largest data centres in India, designed to accommodate massive capacity. This development is part of a growing wave of international investments targeting the surge in demand for artificial intelligence services.
According to sources, the 67-year-old millionaire is reportedly purchasing Nvidia Corp’s high-powered artificial intelligence chips and constructing a data centre in Jamnagar with a projected three gigawatts of capacity. At that scale, it would dwarf any existing data centre.
Ambani Joins the Ranks of Tech Giants
Ambani is the latest tech company to join the ranks of Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon in investing billions of dollars into data centres to provide artificial intelligence capabilities to businesses around the globe. A new corporation named Stargate Project was established this week by OpenAI, SoftBank, Group Corp, and Oracle Corp., with the pledge to invest $100 billion to $500 billion in US AI infrastructure.
The magnitude of Ambani’s initiative will be noticeable if all goes according to plan. According to market research from DC Byte, the largest data centres in operation now are less than 1 gigawatt, making them several times larger than what is already on the market.
The ability of a data centre to power its computers, cooling systems, and other machinery is typically expressed in megawatts. The greater the size of the figure, the greater the number of computing operations it can handle. A lot of computing power is required by AI models.
Ambani became famous for his aggressive business strategies, such as his cold-blooded entry into the cellular market that caused prices to fall and drove out some competitors. His AI playbook appears to be quite comparable, and he has publicly stated his intention to provide extremely low prices for inferencing, or operating models similar to those used by ChatGPT. Companies like OpenAI and local startups face the challenge of inferencing costs, which arise from the need to pay for computing resources for each user query.
It’s unclear how Ambani will pay for the project, which might cost between $20 billion and $30 billion based on similar sites in the area. The main listed entity of the group, Reliance Industries Limited, with a balance sheet totaling around $26 billion.
With the Jamnagar project, India’s data centre capacity—which is now estimated at less than 1 gigawatt—would be greatly increased. Tripling its size would allow the world’s most populated country to significantly speed up its development of artificial intelligence.
The town of Jamnagar, which is home to more than 650,000 people, is situated in Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Ambani also has family ties to Gujarat. It hosts the world-renowned oil refining and petrochemicals complex, which is owned by Reliance.
Challenge of Renewable Energy for Data Centres
One of the conglomerate’s goals is to increase its use of renewable energy, and the community is starting to take notice. In a massive green energy facility spanning five thousand acres, Reliance is reportedly manufacturing photovoltaic panels, fuel cell systems, green hydrogen, energy storage, wind turbines, and more.
According to the people, Reliance plans to use renewable energy sources to power the new data centre to the greatest extent feasible. One source claims that it will border ongoing solar, wind, and green hydrogen energy initiatives by the Reliance Group.
However, without other reliable resources like nuclear reactors, fossil fuel-fired facilities, or extremely huge storage systems, it is nearly hard to provide a steady and reliable stream of solar and wind electricity. Reliance, whose roots are in petroleum goods, may require fossil fuels to power its data centres.
Now, all of the largest data centres in the world are controlled by IT companies based in the US. DC Byte reports that the top three data centre operations are located in Boydton, Virginia: Microsoft, Google, and Meta Platforms Inc. The largest data centre is Microsoft’s in Boydton, Virginia, with a capacity of about 600 megawatts and an additional 12 megawatts under construction.
Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank did not reveal the exact dimensions of the data centres that would be constructed as a component of the Stargate initiative. Although OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has mentioned the possibility of constructing 5-gigawatt facilities, it is not yet known whether such plans are underway.
