source: techcrunch ai: meta signs first ai data center deal in india with reliance
level: business
meta has struck its first ai infrastructure deal in india, partnering with reliance industries on a 168-megawatt data center in jamnagar, gujarat. the facility will be powered by renewable energy and cooled with desalinated seawater. meta will lease capacity and cover all energy and water costs for its operations. reliance expects the data center to be ready within two years, with room for expansion.
the agreement builds on meta's $5.7 billion investment in reliance's jio platforms in 2020 and a $100 million joint venture last year for enterprise ai solutions. reliance will provide end-to-end services from design and construction to renewable power and ongoing operations. meta also contracted nearly 1 gigawatt of new renewable energy in india through deals with cleanmax and fourth partner energy to support the jamnagar site.
india's data center capacity has grown from 375 megawatts in 2020 to about 1.5 gigawatts in 2025, with projections of over 8 gigawatts by 2030. the surge is driven by cloud adoption, ai workloads, and local data processing demand. other tech giants like microsoft, amazon, google, and openai have also announced ai infrastructure investments in india, attracted by policy incentives such as tax exemptions for foreign cloud providers.
why it matters: this deal shows how ai infrastructure is expanding globally, with india becoming a key hub for data centers that support training and deploying ai models.
source: techcrunch ai: meta signs first ai data center deal in india with reliance