A 168-megawatt facility in Jamnagar deepens a six-year alliance, as Meta races to build AI muscle across Asia
Reliance Industries and Meta Platforms announced on June 10 a partnership to build a 168-megawatt AI-enabled data center in Jamnagar, Gujarat — Meta’s first dedicated AI computing facility on Indian soil. Under the arrangement, Reliance will design, construct, own and operate the facility, while Meta leases the capacity with the option to scale up later.
The project extends a relationship that dates back to 2020, when Meta invested $5.7 billion for a stake in Jio Platforms, and to a $100-million enterprise AI joint venture the two companies launched in 2025. The Jamnagar facility now pushes that partnership from software and connectivity into physical AI infrastructure — server farms, power plants and cooling systems.
Jamnagar was chosen for its abundant energy access. The site forms part of a larger Reliance data-center campus, billed as one of the largest such developments in the world, with the broader campus expected to start bringing capacity online in the second half of 2026, ahead of the Meta-dedicated unit’s targeted completion around 2028. The facility will run on renewable power and use desalinated seawater for cooling, with Meta covering all energy and water costs.
Alongside the data-center announcement, Meta said it has lined up nearly 1 gigawatt of fresh clean-energy capacity in India. Renewable energy firm CleanMax will supply 837 MW of solar and wind power across Rajasthan and Karnataka, while Fourth Partner Energy will add another 88 MW spread across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
Neither company put a price tag on the data-center agreement itself, but it lands amid a sharp escalation in Meta’s global spending plans. The company recently raised its 2026 capital-expenditure guidance to a range of $125-145 billion, up from an earlier $115-135 billion estimate — nearly double its 2025 outlay of $72.2 billion — as it races to expand AI computing capacity across the US, Europe and now Asia.
Markets responded swiftly: Reliance shares climbed around 1.9 percent on the NSE following the announcement. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg framed the move as part of the company’s effort to “scale our AI infrastructure globally while deepening our long-term investment in India’s economy.” For Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani, the deal is less about a single facility and more a statement of intent — positioning Gujarat’s industrial coast as a serious node in the global AI buildout, and India as a country ready to compete for the infrastructure that powers the next generation of artificial intelligence.