RIL share price has risen 1.5% in 30 days; what shareholders need to know post AI investment announcement

On Thursday, RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani announced a ₹10 lakh crore investment by his group as he promised to revolutionise artificial intelligence, as he did with mobile data.

Speaking at India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, Ambani said the best of AI is yet to come and that AI can usher in an era of superabundance.

The world, Ambani said, stands at a fork over AI, one path leading to scarce, expensive AI & controlled data, while the other ensures affordable and accessible AI.

"Jio with Reliance will invest ₹10 lakh cr over the next 7 years starting this year," he said. "This is not a speculative investment. It is not for chasing valuation. This is patient, disciplined nation-building capital."

Building India's AI Infrastructure

The biggest constraint in AI is not scarcity of talent but the high cost of compute, he said. "Jio Intelligence will build India's sovereign compute infrastructure."

This includes gigawatt-scale data centres.

Jio connected India to the internet era, and it will now connect it with the intelligence era. "We will deliver intelligence to every citizen, every sector of the economy, and every facet of social development. Jio will do so with the same reliability, scale, and extreme affordability that transformed connectivity," Ambani added.

What Morgan Stanley said

Analysts at Morgan Stanley note that RIL has pivoted every decade in its nearly 48 years of listed history. Its vision to invest US$110bn in AI, related energy supply, and the digital ecosystem over seven years is the next major shift in capital allocation. RIL's proposed AI investment is as large as its telecom/consumer investment in 2014-21.

With an annual operating cash flow (OCF) of $14–15 billion and existing investment commitments, Morgan Stanley estimates that $4–5 billion per year may need to be funded through asset monetisation—such as telecom fibre—to achieve free cash flow (FCF) breakeven.

The global financial services giant estimates that the intelligence business could generate a post-tax return on capital employed (ROCE) of over 12%, roughly twice the returns delivered by RIL’s consumer and telecom investments over the past decade.

Morgan Stanley believes the $110 billion outlay will cover investments in multi-gigawatt data centres, 10 GW of renewable energy infrastructure, energy storage solutions, and AI chips. RIL is expected to commission 120 MW of capacity in the second half of FY26 and, similar to global peers, could scale up meaningfully over the next five years.

Besides this, the much-awaited Jio IPO could unlock value, improve RIL’s balance sheet, and potentially lead to a re-rating of RIL stock.