NEW DELHI, Aug. 31 -- Last week, Mukesh Ambani hosted Reliance Industries' 48th annual general meeting. Among many announcements-Jio's 2026 listing being one-a single statement stood out: "A decade ago, digital services became a new growth engine for Reliance. Now, the opportunity before us with AI is just as large, if not larger."

The remark carries more weight than it appears. In 2016, Ambani's now-famous keynote reshaped the trajectory of the oil-led $200-billion conglomerate. Today, Reliance's telecom arm, Jio, has 50 crore users, over a third of India's population. Affordable mobile data helped fuel UPI adoption and the broader digitization of the Indian economy.

To suggest that AI could be an even bigger opportunity for Jio is, to...