By Chandini Monnappa and Aleef Jahan C S
(Reuters) -India’s Reliance Industries is planning to take its telecoms and digital arm Jio Platforms public by mid-2026, its billionaire chairman said on Friday, a new timeline for the long-delayed IPO of a business valued at over $100 billion.
At its annual general meeting on Friday, Reliance also said it was creating an artificial intelligence unit, with Alphabet’s Google and Meta as strategic partners.
The group’s billionaire chairman Mukesh Ambani first flagged plans in 2019 to list Jio within five years. On Friday he told shareholders that Jio is preparing to file for an IPO next year.
Reuters reported exclusively in July that Jio had decided not to launch its planned IPO in 2025. It was valued by analysts at over $100 billion at that time.
Jio Platforms houses India’s largest telecom operator, Reliance Jio Infocomm, which has over 500 million users.
Backed by global investors including Meta, Google and KKR, it has been central to Ambani’s push to diversify Reliance beyond oil and chemicals into consumer, retail and technology, with AI now a key pillar of its growth strategy along with expansion overseas.
Reliance is also investing $8.8 billion to grow its chemicals business. It expects its retail business to continue growing sales by approaching 10% a year on a like-for-like basis, and to add 2,000–3,000 new stores annually.
Jio is not being fully valued within Reliance’s broader petrochemicals and retail portfolio, and a separate listing would help unlock higher value for the telecom and digital unit, said Saurabh Parikh, senior analyst at ICRA Ltd.
AI FOR ALL
Reliance and Meta on Friday announced a new AI joint venture with an initial investment of about $100 million. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the AGM the new unit will deliver Meta’s open-source AI models to Indian businesses.
Google is partnering with Reliance to use AI across the conglomerate’s energy, retail, telecom and financial services businesses, and will establish a Jamnagar Cloud region dedicated to Reliance, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the AGM.
The partnerships come at a time when ties between India and Washington have been strained due to U.S. President Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs on Indian exports, a response to India buying Russian oil.
Reliance operates the world’s largest refining complex in the western state of Gujarat and is also the biggest buyer of Russian oil in India.
(Reporting by Chandini Monnappa, Aleef Jahan and Kashish Tandon in Bengaluru; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Jan Harvey)
