Beyond the SIM: Inside Jio and Airtel’s high-stakes AI pivot

For years, the battle between Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel played out over tariffs, subscribers, and the race to build India's 3G, 4G and 5G networks. The next phase is moving into a much larger arena. Both companies are building businesses around the infrastructure and services that could shape how India uses AI.

Jio and Airtel already have something many technology companies would struggle to build from scratch, that is, millions of customers and extensive digital infrastructure. Their current investments suggest an attempt to use that reach to move deeper into the AI economy.

The data centre race

Computing capacity has become one of the biggest constraints on AI adoption. Jio is responding with a major infrastructure push through Reliance Intelligence. On February 19, Reliance mentioned its Jamnagar AI campus will begin commissioning its first 120 MW by the end of 2026. The company plans to power the facility with renewable energy generated through its own ecosystem.


Airtel is expanding through Nxtra. The company announced a $1 billion investment into the data centre business in March for expansion across India. Nxtra currently operates 14 large data centres and more than 120 edge facilities. It is also developing AI-ready campuses in cities including Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata.

Cloud becomes part of the competition

The cloud push gives Jio and Airtel another route into the enterprise technology market. Jio’s enterprise cloud offering combines cloud infrastructure with AI capabilities, including GPU computing, AI model development and deployment tools. Its AI Cloud, launched in 2024, also brought cloud storage and AI-powered services to consumers, giving the company a way to build familiarity with its cloud ecosystem at scale.

Airtel Cloud, meanwhile, is focused more directly on businesses. Launched commercially in 2025, the platform offers cloud and computing services with data hosted in India. Airtel has positioned it for sectors where data residency and security are particularly important, while its existing data centre network gives it infrastructure to support these workloads.

The company has also expanded Airtel Cloud through a partnership with IBM, announced in October 2025. The partnership brings IBM's cloud and AI technologies to Airtel's platform, with an initial focus on industries including banking, healthcare and government. Airtel has said the collaboration will also expand its cloud presence across India.

From infrastructure to enterprise products

The bigger question is whether these investments can become products that businesses will pay for.

Jio has been developing JioBrain as an enterprise AI platform while expanding its cloud offering. Airtel has also been applying AI to areas where it has a direct view of network activity. Its spam detection system has identified billions of suspicious calls and messages, turning a technology capability into a service customers can actually experience.

Consumer subscriptions are becoming another route into the AI market. Reliance has partnered with Google to offer eligible Jio users 18 months of Google AI Pro at no extra cost, giving subscribers access to Gemini, NotebookLM and 2TB of cloud storage. Airtel has taken a similar approach through its partnership with Perplexity, offering 12 months of Perplexity Pro to its mobile, broadband and DTH customers. Both companies are using their existing subscriber bases to put AI services directly in front of consumers.

The stakes are therefore moving well beyond the SIM. Jio and Airtel are testing how much of the AI journey they can own, from the infrastructure underneath it to the services customers eventually use.

At India Mobile Congress 2026, in New Delhi between October 7 and 10, this shift will form part of the wider conversation around AI, cloud and the changing role of telecom companies. As operators invest deeper into the technology stack, the focus will increasingly turn to how these capabilities translate into services that businesses and consumers actually use.

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