Mukesh Ambani unveils RIL's deeptech blueprint to become one of world's top 30 valuable companies

Reliance Industries Ltd Chairman Mukesh Ambani's address to shareholders on August 29 was reminiscent of a Silicon Valley-style keynote, reflecting the conglomerate's growing emphasis on advanced technology and innovation.

Ambani's speech was punctuated by more than 50 references to artificial intelligence (AI) as he laid out an ambitious blueprint of deeptech moves to transform the oil-to-telecom conglomerate.

"RIL has become a net producer of tech. Breakthrough tech has always been the greatest wealth creators for nations and corporates. RIL internalised this vikas mantra at every stage of growth. In recent years this mantra is transforming RIL into a deeptech company," said Ambani at the conglomerate's 47th annual general meeting.

"Reliance took over two decades to be amongst the Top 500 companies globally. The following two decades saw us joining the league of the world's Top-50 most valuable companies. With our strategic adoption of deep-tech and advanced manufacturing, I can clearly see Reliance earning a place in the Top-30 League in the near future." he added.

Here are some of the deeptech efforts RIL announced at the AGM:

Elevated spends on deeptech R&D 

Reliance spent over Rs 3,643 crore ($437 million) in FY24 towards R&D, taking our spend on research to over Rs 11,000 crore ($1.5 billion) in the last four years alone. It has more than 1,000 scientists and researchers working on critical research projects across all businesses.

Jio is among India's largest patent holders, with over 350 patents in 5G and 6G technologies alone.

"I feel proud to inform you that last year Reliance filed over 2,555 patents, mainly in the areas of bio-energy innovations, solar and other green energy sources, and high-value chemicals," said Ambani.

Low-cost solar energy

To harness low-cost solar energy and make it available round the clock, RIL needs energy storage solutions using stationary batteries. For this, it has already begun construction of an integrated advanced chemistry-based battery manufacturing facility with a 30 GWh annual capacity at Jamnagar. Production will start by the second half of next year.

It will start by assembling Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) for utility-scale applications and pack solutions for residential, commercial, industrial, telecom, and mobility markets. Progressively, over the next few quarters, it plans to integrate backwards into cell manufacturing and eventually into battery chemicals production. This will create the world's only fully integrated battery giga-factory, driving synergies across the value chain.

Connected Intelligence with AI 

AI services must be accessible on all devices, not just expensive, high-end devices, said Ambani. This requires a delivery model where AI services and the data processed by AI are both hosted in the cloud, allowing every user to access their data and AI services from anywhere, on any device, over low-latency broadband networks.

"This is the only way to ensure that everyone, irrespective of their socioeconomic background, will benefit from AI. We call this concept Connected Intelligence. As a first step to Connected Intelligence, every user needs ample and affordable data storage capacity in the cloud, with the highest levels of privacy and security," he said.

AI cloud for Jio users

Jio users will get up to 100 GB of free cloud storage to securely store and access all their photos, videos, documents, all other digital content, and data. "We plan to launch the Jio AI-Cloud Welcome offer starting Diwali this year, bringing a powerful and affordable solution where cloud data storage and data-powered AI services are available to everyone everywhere,” added Ambani.

AI data centres powered by green energy

RIL is laying the groundwork for a national AI infrastructure. "We plan to establish gigawatt scale AI-ready data centres in Jamnagar, powered entirely by Reliance's green energy, reflecting our commitment to sustainability and a greener future,” said Ambani.

Cultivating AI talent

The RIL chief said that to achieve AI leadership, the company also needs to invest in talent development.

"That is why Jio is partnering with Jio Institute to develop a cutting-edge AI program. This programme is designed to cultivate the next generation of AI talent in India. By equipping young minds with the skills for advanced AI, we are securing Jio's future and contributing to India's development as a global technology hub," he announced.

Jio Brain to deliver AI benefits to every Indian

The company is embedding AI into all its processes and offerings, creating end-to-end workflows with real-time, data-driven insights and automation.

"This is helping us deliver smarter, more responsive services, to both internal users and customers. To streamline AI adoption, Jio is developing a comprehensive suite of tools and platforms that span the entire AI lifecycle. We call this Jio Brain,” said Mukesh Ambani.

AI phone calls with Jio

It is developing Jio Phonecall AI, which lets customers use AI with every phone call. Jio Phonecall AI can record and store any call in Jio Cloud and automatically transcribe it, which means automatically converting it from voice to text. It can also summarise the call, and even translate it into another language. This allows anyone to easily capture and access important voice conversations, making them searchable, shareable, and understandable across languages—all with just a few clicks.

AI with security and privacy 

More importantly, Ambani announced that these AI models and services will be hosted within India's borders. They will comply fully with Indian data and privacy regulations, ensuring the security and privacy of our citizens are always protected.