Jio Platforms is reportedly joining forces with technology companies like Nvidia to co-develop affordable and personalised AI solutions, aiming to make artificial intelligence (AI) as accessible as mobile data. This move aligns with Reliance Industries’ strategy as it gears up to replicate its telecom sector disruption by slashing data prices in the AI space. Jio Platforms to co-develop AI language models to offer transformative solutions such as affordable and personalised AI-as-a-service and AI agent applications, ET reported.
Jio is reportedly working on AI language models and personalised AI agents, targeting sectors like retail, healthcare, agriculture, and education. On the infrastructure front, RIL’s technology arm is participating in the India AI Mission, partnering with Nvidia to acquire their high-end Blackwell GPUs.
“Once empanelled, Jio aims to offer GPU-as-a-service to startups and researchers at the most competitive price in the world, a senior company executive reportedly said, outlining RIL’s overall strategy around next-generation technologies.
“There are three factors to accessible and affordable AI – the device, the data (on cloud), and high-speed broadband networks and Jio is working on all these so that every individual can have a personal AI agency based on his needs and likes,” the executive reportedly said.
“The way Jio has democratised data usage we want to do the same with AI,” the executive added, according to the report, referring to how Reliance Jio brought mobile data prices in India crashing down to now being among the cheapest in the world.
According to the report, Nvidia GPUs are being utilised by Reliance Industries for in-house applications and the development of Jio-branded products and services based on large language models (LLMs). In addition to driving its AI Mission, Jio is exploring monetisation opportunities through Jio Brain, an enterprise AI suite.
“The AI Mission is a government initiative to offer GPUs at a subsidised cost. For instance, assuming if the price is Rs 25 per GPU hour, the government will subsidise Rs 5-10 out of that. We (Jio and others) as vendors will compete to offer lower prices to Rs 25,” the executive reportedly explained.
The India AI Mission is a Rs 10,300-crore project aimed at fostering responsible AI innovation in the country. Of this, Rs 5,000 crore is allocated for procuring AI compute hardware through partnerships with cloud providers, data center companies, and others.
Jio Platforms, along with 18 other bidders, submitted their bids in December to qualify for empanelment under the Mission, and these bids are currently undergoing technical evaluation, the report highlighted.
“RIL is building a 1 GW AI data centre in Jamnagar both for captive use and offering GPU-as-a-service to commercial projects like the India AI Mission. As the usage scales, Jio will expand more AI inferencing facilities in its own premises across India, bringing AI closer to the edge,” the executive reportedly said.
Speaking about the high cost of AI infrastructure and running LLMs, the executive reportedly said, “Green energy will play a big role in bringing down operational costs of AI going forward. Global research has also suggested that there has been a significant decline in cost of AI hardware. India needs affordability. Without that, AI is just a fancy thing here… It will never scale up.”
Jio Brain Suite
For AI to be accessible, it must be available on cheap devices with data hosted on the cloud, according to the person. Internally, Reliance is working on embedding AI into corporate functions across its various businesses, including oil and gas refinery operations, telecom network management, and retail store security through the Jio Brain suite, the report said, adding, Jio Brain is housed under Jio Platforms.
“We are creating end-to-end workflows with real-time data, which helps us in smarter and quicker decision making,” the executive reportedly said. “Think of it as automatic, very simple manual tasks. But at scale, they create so much value. Once Jio Brain as a platform is perfected within Reliance, we can offer it to other enterprises as well.”
Jio recently started rolling out free AI cloud storage of up to 100GB for users to store photos, videos, documents, other digital content. If you have received your free access, let us know via X at @TelecomTalk.
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