Google & Reliance partner to bring premium AI tools to millions of Jio customers

Google and Reliance announced a deep strategic collaboration aimed at accelerating artificial intelligence (AI) adoption across India. The alliance brings together Google’s advanced AI ecosystem with Reliance’s expansive network and consumer base, with the first concrete benefit being access to Google’s premium AI services for eligible users of Jio.

What’s the deal? Under the partnership, eligible Jio customers will receive Google’s “AI Pro” plan free of cost for up to 18 months. This includes: access to Google’s next-gen model Gemini 2.5 Pro, expanded tools for image and video generation (including models named Nano Banana and Veo 3.1), Notebook LM for research, and 2 TB of cloud storage across Gmail/Drive/Photos. The initial rollout targets Jio users aged 18-25 on unlimited 5G plans; the company says it will expand to all Jio customers nationwide “in the shortest time possible”. The offer is valued at approximately ₹ 35,100 (Indian rupees) for the 18-month period. In addition to the consumer-offering, the tie-up encompasses enterprise and infrastructure elements: Reliance Intelligence (a subsidiary of RIL) will partner with Google Cloud to deploy advanced AI hardware (such as TPUs Tensor Processing Units) and to bring Google’s enterprise AI platform Gemini Enterprise into Indian organisations.

Why this matters For Google, India remains a strategic growth market: the collaboration with a domestic giant like Reliance gives faster access to millions of consumers, strong telecom infrastructure via Jio, and a channel for enterprise AI uptake. Google CEO Sundar Pichai described the tie-up as a continuation of Google’s long-standing India strategy, now entering the “AI era”.

For Reliance, this aligns with its ambition of being at the centre of India’s digital and intelligence-services ecosystem. As RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani put it, the aim is to make “India not just AI-enabled but AI-empowered”.

For consumers, the free access to high-end AI tools is a significant value-add. Jio customers and by extension potentially many consumers in India get early access to generative-AI features and large-scale cloud storage. This may raise the bar for telecom operators and digital service providers in India.