Leaders’ Plenary | Global Vision for AI Impact and Governance- Afternoon Session
Summary
The India AI Impact Summit gathered government officials, CEOs of major technology firms, and industry leaders to discuss how artificial intelligence can drive India’s economic growth and global leadership [1-3].
Sundar Pichai emphasized that India is poised to become a global AI leader thanks to its talent, deep-tech expertise and startup ecosystem, and announced Google’s full-stack commitment including a $15 billion Vizag AI Hub and partnerships across agriculture, healthcare and skilling [4-10][11-13].
Dario Amodei of Anthropic highlighted the need to both amplify AI’s benefits and manage its risks, proposing collaborative tracking of AI’s economic impact and sharing data to mitigate disruptions [21-35].
Demis Hassabis described AI as a transformative force comparable to ten times the Industrial Revolution, citing AlphaFold’s breakthrough in protein folding as an early example of AI accelerating science and medicine [39-49].
Alexander Wang of Meta outlined plans to empower tens of millions of Indian small businesses through WhatsApp-based services and to extend governance tools to citizens, reinforcing the company’s commitment to AI-driven digital inclusion [54-68].
Arthur Mensch warned that unchecked market concentration could hinder equitable AI benefits and advocated open-source models and multilingual support to ensure broad participation [72-78].
Sam Altman called for the democratization of AI, stressing that sovereign approaches and iterative deployment are essential for a large democracy like India to lead responsibly [82-99].
Brad Smith of Microsoft stressed the historic synergy between Indian and U.S. IT sectors and urged protection of digital sovereignty while enabling cross-border technology collaboration [149-162].
Industry representatives announced specific AI-related investments: Philips on healthcare AI and data access [165-177]; FedEx on logistics analytics and a ₹10 000-crore hub in Navi Mumbai [125-139]; Fujitsu on high-performance computing and data sovereignty [141-146]; Micron on memory manufacturing for AI workloads [190-205]; Qualcomm on a 2-nm chip design in India [210-221]; Cisco on skilling and infrastructure support [230-238]; Cloudflare on an accessibility framework and free credits for startups [248-267]; and Palo Alto on security, governance and AI services for citizens [270-276].
Mukesh Ambani reiterated the “Manav” vision, pledging a 10 lakh-crore AI investment and emphasizing AI’s role in job creation and affordable intelligence for all citizens [278-303].
Natarajan Chandrasekaran highlighted India’s ambition and skill as drivers of AI leadership and committed Tata Group to scaling AI hardware, data centres and global business outreach [306-326].
Sunil Mittal praised India’s rapid 5G rollout and frugal innovation, while Rishi Sunak called for responsible, transparent AI development that lifts the floor for health and education worldwide [329-347][385-406].
Prime Minister Narendra Modi concluded by reaffirming India’s commitment to inclusive, sovereign AI development and urging continued partnership among global stakeholders to realize the nation’s transformative vision [509-528].
Keypoints
Major discussion points
– India’s ambition to become a global AI super-power – Speakers repeatedly highlighted India’s talent, startup ecosystem and government vision as the foundation for leading the next AI revolution. Sundar Pichai called India “poised to be a global AI leader” and said Google will bring a “full-stack commitment” [8-9]; Demis Hassabis described India as a “real powerhouse in the AI revolution” and a critical part of a new “golden era of scientific discovery” [41-44]; Mukesh Ambani noted the rapid digital transformation and pledged massive AI investment, saying “India is ready… to take advantage of the AI revolution” [278-292]; Rishi Sunak echoed the ranking of India as a leading AI super-power [387-389].
– Large-scale investment and infrastructure commitments across the AI stack – Multiple firms announced hardware, cloud, semiconductor and talent initiatives. Google’s Vizag AI Hub ($15 bn) and end-to-end partnerships were cited [10-11]; Microsoft’s skilling and cross-border collaboration was emphasized [152-155]; Micron detailed its 500,000 sq ft clean-room and memory production to fuel AI [190-204]; General Catalyst pledged a $5 bn fund for Indian AI startups [452-455]; Vinod Khosla and Lightspeed reiterated multi-billion-dollar investment plans and support for AI-driven services [458-465][488-492].
– Democratizing AI and driving social impact – Speakers stressed that AI must be accessible to citizens, small businesses, farmers, students and patients. Sam Altman urged “AI has to be democratized” and placed responsibility on India to lead [85-99]; Matthew Prince proposed frameworks to ensure 500,000 AI companies, business models for creators and tools for the poorest [250-259]; Nandan Nilekani gave a concrete example of AI for dairy farmers that went from idea to live service in a month [354-366]; Khosla suggested free AI tutors, doctors and agronomists integrated with Aadhaar [462-470].
– Governance, ethics, data sovereignty and security concerns – Several leaders warned that rapid AI diffusion must be paired with robust oversight. Dario Amodei called for shared economic data to mitigate disruptions [31-35]; Arthur Mensch warned about “excessive concentration of power” and advocated open-source models [76-78]; Takahito Tokita highlighted data sovereignty, human dignity and ethical safeguards [141-146]; Nikesh Arora stressed the need for governance, accountability and “kill-switches” to prevent rogue AI [270-276].
Overall purpose / goal
The round-table was convened to align India’s government vision with the global AI ecosystem, secure commitments for infrastructure, talent development and financing, and establish a collaborative framework for responsible, inclusive and economically transformative AI deployment in India and beyond.
Overall tone
The discussion was overwhelmingly upbeat and forward-looking, with participants praising India’s progress and expressing enthusiasm for partnership. As the session progressed, the tone shifted to incorporate cautionary notes on ethics, data sovereignty and security, reflecting a balanced view that combines optimism about AI’s potential with a call for responsible governance.
Speakers
The round-table opened with Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw welcoming Prime Minister Narendra Modi, senior government officials and a roster of roughly 28 CEOs, urging participants to keep their remarks concise as the discussion moved forward [1-3].
Sundar Pichai thanked Prime Minister Modi and declared that India is “poised to be a global AI leader” because of its world-class talent, deep-tech expertise and vibrant start-up ecosystem [8]. He outlined Google’s “full-stack commitment” that will span TPUs, cloud infrastructure, research collaborations and end-to-end partnerships across agriculture, healthcare and language access [9-13]. The cornerstone of this commitment is the Vizag AI Hub - a $15 billion investment - which he presented as Google’s initial step in India [10-11].
Dario Amodei of Anthropic stressed that India’s central role must include both amplifying AI’s benefits and managing its risks [22-23]. He called for collaborative tracking of AI’s economic impact, proposing that companies share usage statistics and economic data so that “we can accentuate the good parts and mitigate any of the disruptions” [31-35]. He also highlighted Anthropic’s partnership with the XSTEP Foundation and its Agritech initiatives [36-38].
Demis Hassabis of DeepMind described AI as a transformative force “ten times the Industrial Revolution, ten times the speed, over a decade” [47-49]. He cited AlphaFold’s solution of the 50-year protein-folding problem as an early illustration of AI-driven scientific acceleration [43-44] and argued that India’s talent pool and research capacity are critical to unlocking a new “golden era of scientific discovery” [41-46].
Alexander Wang of Meta highlighted the company’s plan to empower “tens of millions of Indian small businesses” through WhatsApp-based services and to extend digital-governance tools directly to citizens, noting successes such as 100 million subway tickets sold via WhatsApp in Andhra Pradesh [60-66]. He also showcased Meta Ray-Ban glasses and the Be My Eyes capability as product demos for inclusive AI [67-70]. He reaffirmed Meta’s commitment to continue partnering with the Indian government on AI-enabled inclusion [58-59].
Arthur Mensch of Mistral AI warned that unchecked market concentration could lead to “excessive price and extractive economy” [76-77]. He advocated open-source AI as a “common good” that would allow broad participation, multilingual support and cultural nuance, and highlighted recent work on Indian-language audio models [73-78][79-80].
Sam Altman of OpenAI framed AI democratisation as a national imperative, stating that “no company or person or country is equipped to help society navigate that change” [89-90] and urging sovereign, iterative deployment that puts tools in the hands of the Indian populace while mitigating disruption [91-99].
Brad Smith of Microsoft underscored the historic synergy between the Indian and U.S. IT sectors, pledging continued investment, partnership and skilling in India [152-155]. He called for protection of digital sovereignty and cross-border trust, suggesting that India and the United States could serve as a model for responsible AI collaboration [158-162].
Sector-specific announcements followed. Philips detailed its $1.7 billion AI-driven software investment, its work with the Indian Ministry of Health on data-level support for the Digital Act, and plans to aid primary-care workers with AI tools [165-176]. FedEx described a ₹10 000 crore logistics hub in Navi Mumbai, noting AI’s role in cutting freight costs from 15 % to 8 % and the generation of two petabytes of data daily [125-138]. Fujitsu highlighted its capability to build super-computers and quantum computers, stressing data sovereignty, human dignity and ethical AI as essential foundations [141-146]. Micron announced a 500 000 sq ft clean-room and memory-assembly line that will account for 10 % of its global output, positioning memory as “the fuel of AI” [190-204]. Qualcomm celebrated the design of India’s first 2-nm chip, signalling a “tremendous” opportunity for the country to become a global semiconductor player [210-221]. Cisco reported training 800 000 Indians in cybersecurity, AI and networking, and pledged to provide the underlying infrastructure needed for AI democratisation [230-238]. Cloudflare proposed a framework to nurture 500 000 AI companies, provide business models for creators and small businesses, and offered free credits and AI-for-Bharat services across Indian languages [248-267]. Palo Alto Networks announced an AI-security competence centre in Bangalore with 1 500 staff, focusing on governance, accountability and “kill-switches” for autonomous agents [270-276].
Mukesh Ambani, representing Reliance-Jio, reiterated the Prime Minister’s ‘Manav’ (human-centric) vision as an AI manifesto, noting that India has moved from 138th to world-leader in digital connectivity and pledging ₹10 lakh crore (≈ $120 bn) of AI investment over seven years to make intelligence “democratic and affordable” for every citizen [278-303].
Natarajan Chandrasekaran of the Tata Group highlighted India’s “ambition and skill” as twin drivers of AI leadership and committed Tata to scaling AI hardware, building data centres, and extending AI services globally, thereby supporting both national transformation and international outreach [317-320][322-326].
Sunil Mittal of Airtel praised the rapid 5G rollout-“from 138th to number one” in connectivity-and framed AI delivery as a continuation of India’s tradition of frugal innovation, promising to keep the “muscles” of data-centres and fibre affordable for a billion users [329-340].
Former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (actually the current UK Prime Minister) recalled his 2019 Bletchley Park AI summit, cited Stanford’s AI Index ranking India as a leading AI super-power, and warned that AI companies will spend 20 × the resources of the Manhattan Project [385-406][387-389]. He noted that England is just ahead of India in ICC test rankings [390-391] and emphasized that the summit’s ranking comes from Stanford’s AI index [392-393]. Sunak stated that the “first duty … is to ensure safety” and the “second responsibility … is to benefit everyone, especially health and education” [394-395][396-398], urging participants to “raise the ceiling and lift the floor” for all [399-400]. He also highlighted the “special and distinctive thing about these summits” – their public-private nature – as a catalyst for responsible AI development [401-404].
Nandan Nilekani illustrated rapid AI diffusion with the Amul dairy example: an idea presented on 8 January was live by 11 February, delivering AI-driven cattle health advice to millions of farmers, especially women, while keeping data sovereign within Amul [354-366].
Vinod Khosla advocated integrating free AI tutors, doctors and agronomists into the Aadhaar ecosystem, likening them to UPI as a public utility that would ensure universal access and democratic permission for AI [462-470]. He also noted early investments in sovereign AI models such as Sarvam and highlighted the need for AI-driven services that benefit the entire population [458-465].
Hemant Taneja of General Catalyst announced a $5 billion, five-year fund for Indian AI start-ups, describing AI as an “abundance” engine that can empower the country’s young workforce and multiply productivity without causing social disruption [452-455].
Additional commitments included Adobe’s decision to make Photoshop, Acrobat and Firefly free for students and to launch a content-authenticity initiative [115-123]; G42’s plan to build a “token factory” and an “agent factory” in partnership with Indian stakeholders [433-440]; Vertiv’s pledge to expand manufacturing and services in India [422-425]; and the Blue Raman subsea cable project, a joint Google-SPACL effort to enhance AI-ready connectivity between Italy and Mumbai [416-418].
Prime Minister Narendra Modi concluded by reaffirming India’s commitment to an inclusive, sovereign AI ecosystem, urging continued partnership among global stakeholders, and emphasizing that the nation’s future prosperity will be built on “faith, collaboration and the democratic permission of the people” [509-528].
Consensus and points of agreement emerged around three core themes: (1) AI’s transformative economic impact comparable to a ten-fold Industrial Revolution (Hassabis, Altman, Arora, Sunak) [47-49][85-89][270-272][386-389]; (2) the need to democratise AI through open-source models, massive ecosystem growth and integration with public platforms such as Aadhaar, WhatsApp and free-tool initiatives (Altman, Mensch, Khosla, Wang, Narayen) [85-89][73-78][462-470][60-66][115-123]; and (3) large-scale skilling as essential for realising AI’s potential (Pichai, Sweet, Patel, Smith) [9-14][102-108][232-238][152-155].
Key disagreements centred on (a) open-source versus proprietary full-stack approaches (Mensch vs. Pichai, Hassabis and other corporate speakers) [73-78][7-10]; (b) whether AI services should be delivered as Aadhaar-linked public utilities (Khosla) or via private-sector platforms such as WhatsApp and Adobe’s free tools (Wang, Narayen) [462-470][60-66][115-119]; and (c) the scale and focus of investment, with Reliance pledging ₹10 lakh crore for social sectors, General Catalyst committing $5 billion to start-ups, and Khosla highlighting earlier sovereign-AI investments [278-303][452-455][458-465].
Take-aways from the summit include: (i) AI is viewed as a multi-digit GDP driver that will outpace the Industrial Revolution in speed and scale; (ii) India’s talent, start-up ecosystem and recent digital infrastructure position it as a global AI super-power; (iii) there is broad consensus on democratising AI through free tools, open-source models and public-utility integration; (iv) private-sector commitments span the full AI stack-from chips and memory (Micron, Qualcomm) to connectivity (Blue Raman) and sector-specific applications (healthcare, logistics, creative economy); (v) partnerships between government and industry are deemed essential for skilling, research, regulation and responsible deployment; (vi) governance, ethics, security and data sovereignty are non-negotiable pillars; (vii) concrete use-cases such as AI-enabled dairy health, logistics optimisation and AI-driven medical devices are already being piloted; and (viii) large-scale talent development programmes are already underway.
Unresolved issues include the precise design of regulatory frameworks for AI governance and autonomous agents, mechanisms for equitable value distribution, standards for “kill-switches” and cross-border security, and the operationalisation of Aadhaar-linked AI services. Addressing these gaps will require coordinated policy action, continued public-private dialogue and transparent data-sharing mechanisms as advocated by Anthropic and Cloudflare.
In sum, the India AI Impact Summit demonstrated a high degree of alignment among government, multinational corporations and investors on the strategic importance of AI, while also surfacing nuanced debates over openness, public-utility delivery and investment magnitude. The commitments announced-ranging from a $15 billion Vizag hub to a $5 billion venture fund-lay the groundwork for India to pursue an inclusive, sovereign and globally influential AI future, provided that the agreed-upon governance and ethical safeguards are implemented in a timely and collaborative manner.
Honorable Prime Minister Sir and the leaders from the industry, captains of industry thank you all for joining us in this India AI Impact Summit. In this round table we will, I request that just like we economize with coding, please do economize with the comments, that would be great. This is a longish list about 28 CEOs here, so I’ll start with the alphabet, Mr. Sundar, so the floor is yours Did I do a cold call to you?
You did cold call me, but I’ll be brief. First of all, thank you to Prime Minister Modi. What an extraordinary opportunity to have the AI Summit here I think we are coming here with a clear message. I believe India is going to have an extraordinary trajectory with AI, and Google wants to be a partner. It’s very clear to me India is poised to be a global AI leader, the world -class talent, deep tech expertise, and a vibrant startup ecosystem. And we will bring a full -stack commitment to India, all the way from TPUs to infrastructure investments to research and models. And the Vizag project, the AI Hub, which is a $15 billion investment, is our start.
And we are partnering. The Prime Minister had challenged us to partner across agriculture, healthcare, drive language access, and we are doing all of that. And going forward, we’ll work on skilling, working with the government. We are partnering with Indian companies and startups end -to -end to build AI -powered services. And we want to work together with you to establish partnerships. Good frameworks for AI companies. governance. Prime Minister, your vision for digital India was an inspiration, and we can see the change that’s happened in the country, and I think AI can accelerate that vision, and we are excited to work with you to build a future where everyone benefits with this transformation. Thank you.
That was really good, really good. We’ll go to Mr. Dario from Anthropic.
Thank you again, Mr. Prime Minister. It’s clear, as I said in my remarks earlier today, that, you know, India really has a central role to play, especially in accentuating the benefits, but, you know, also in addressing the risks. You know, we come to this with unique perspective as an enterprise company. You know, we view… India not just as a source of consumers, but, you know, a place where we can work along with companies to help them do what they do better and help to augment that with AI, whether that’s, you know, business processes or distribution or the software that they’ve built or their specific understanding of the Indian market. You know, we are generally seeking to infuse AI into what these companies do and, you know, partner with them and grow together along with them and, you know, through them bring AI technology to kind of all the places in the Indian market where consumers are already being served.
We’re also, I think, you know, very interested and encourage everyone else to do things that bring, you know, unique social benefits or work with the XSTEP Foundation and Agritech and some of the other organizations. Some of the other areas. We’ve only started, you know, doing this work for a few months, but it’s already starting to bear fruit, and there’s, you know, there’s an enormous amount of benefit to be had. And then finally, you know, it seems as if it is already starting, and, you know, I encourage more of it. We want to help however we can tracking the economic impacts of AI across India, both the ways in which it accelerates growth and the shifts.
And, you know, we’re willing to help however we can. We keep our own kind of economic statistics that we publish of how people use our models. We encourage other companies to kind of do the same, and I think it’s complementary to the view that the government has. And so if we all share the different kinds of data that we have and try and understand the economic transformation as it happens, we can accentuate, you know, the good parts and mitigate any of the disruptions.
Great. Thank you, Dario. Yours and Sam’s picture is today already viral. Thank you. We have next Nobel laureate, Sir Demis Hassabis from DeepMind, part of Google.
Thank you, and thank you, Prime Minister Modi, for organizing this amazing summit. I’ve been so impressed with what I’ve seen in India, the energy and enthusiasm around the technology and what it can unlock, especially from the youth of the country. I think India is poised to be a real powerhouse in the AI revolution. For myself, I think we’re at the amazing threshold moment with the technology, which I always dreamed of, which is to use AI as the ultimate tool for accelerating science. And our program, AlphaFold, that solved the 50 -year grand challenge of protein folding, I think is just the first example of what I hope will be many examples over the next decade of how we can advance science and medicine with AI.
That’s our passion. I think Sundar mentioned all the investments we’re making into the industry and the India ecosystem. We see it as a key thing for us in terms of research and also the use of our products. I think we’re poised that this next step to the impact that AI is going to have is sort of hard to estimate. The way I sometimes talk about it is it’s going to be sort of 10 times the industrial revolution, the impact of the industrial revolution, but maybe at 10 times the speed happening over a decade instead of a century. So if you think about that, that’s kind of 100 times the impact of the industrial revolution, which of course was already enormous.
But I think if we get this right and these next steps, and I think India has a really critical part to play in this on the global stage, then we could unlock a new golden era of scientific discovery and acceleration to benefit everywhere around the world. Thank you.
Thank you, Sir Hassabis. Mr. Alexander Wang from Meta. The floor is yours.
Congratulations, Prime Minister Modi, on such an incredible summit. It was so incredible to see all of the who’s who, as you mentioned, in AI, coming here along with so many of the great business leaders here and so many of the great… world leaders. We’re very excited. It’s very clear that India will be a very major player in AI and really, as Sir Dema said, one of the AI powerhouses of the future. We see it as one of the most entrepreneurial and vibrant countries in the world, and we’re so excited to see all the growth here. And at Meta, we’re excited for continued partnership as we look into this next era. We were so grateful to have you at our booth to see the Meta Ray -Ban glasses and the Be My Eyes capabilities, and so we were so grateful to have you.
We’re also so excited to support small businesses on top of WhatsApp and Facebook. We have tens of millions of small businesses in the country of India, and we’re so excited to empower them with AI and with more digital tools to enable them to grow their businesses and continue succeeding in the country. And we’re also excited to partner with the government of India to bring governance to citizens through WhatsApp as well. You know, we’re seeing this already in the state of AP. You know, we’re bringing lots of governance tools to the citizens directly through WhatsApp. I think last year over 100 million subway tickets were sold on WhatsApp. And so we’re so excited to continue partnering. I think the vision and ambition in the country is so clear in terms of digitization, modernization, and AI.
And we’re excited to continue partnering closely. Thank you.
Great. Thank you, Alexander. We have Dr. Arthur Mensch from Mistral AI.
Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, for having us here. I would say I’ll be brief. I’d say the AI is going to change the economy profoundly. As an enterprise AI company, we serve the enterprise transformations. And as a consequence of that, we work with a lot of integrators in India already. we need to see that AI is going to drive multiple digits of the global GDP in the coming years and what that means is that we need to worry about two things first that everybody needs to participate in it and get access in it and in that your leadership in bringing the technology to people is actually very commendable. The other thing that is I think important is that everybody needs to take a share of the value creation that is going to occur and in that respect a risk that we may all suffer from is excessive concentration of power and excessive market concentration this may lead to excessive price and extractive economy we should beware of this concentration and what the way to actually face that is to we are betting on open source technology which is a way to create in common goods for everybody to be able to take a hold of it and to modify it and to deploy it without external control we should worry about cultural nuances and languages this is something that we have heavily invested on as initially European company and that’s something that we have been doing for Indian languages recently in audio So open source can take us to make sure that everybody gets a chance to take a share of all of the wealth that AI is going to create.
And so we are grateful for your leadership in that domain and would be very happy to be collaborating. Thank you.
Great. Thank you. From OpenAI, Sam.
Thank you, Prime Minister, for having us. As my colleagues have said, India will no doubt be a powerhouse in AI in many ways. The investment across the full stack from infrastructure to models to applications is quite something. There’s one area in particular that I hope India will lead. I think AI has to be democratized. As everyone has said, this will be a seismic shift. This will be maybe, as Demis said, ten times the size of the Industrial Revolution, ten times faster. No company or person or country is equipped to help society navigate that change. This has to be democratized. We have to put these. These tools in the hands of lots of people. Countries need their own sovereign approaches.
This will be a huge disruption to many ways of life. This will be wonderful in many other ways. There will be major things to mitigate. But this is a case where no one knows exactly what’s going to happen, and we have to figure it out iteratively. We have to deploy it step by step, integrate it in the world, and put this in the hands of people and countries and figure out the path forward together. And as the largest democracy in the world, I hope and I believe India will lead in this effort to democratize AI.
Thank you, Sam. And as we move from the model layer to the services layer now, Exchange Chair, Ms. Julie Sweet, the floor is yours.
Thank you, and thank you very much, Prime Minister Modi, for bringing us together. I do believe that this is India’s moment because of the investments that you have made, not only in the digital infrastructure of the country, but where we see it, which is in your people. We have over 350 ,000 people here, and we are growing ourselves. And we are bringing other companies here through the Global Capability Centers as we advise our clients on their talent strategy. And top of that strategy is coming to India to access the incredible talent here. And so at a moment when the next decades will be shaped by AI, we have one of the largest AI workforces in the world here in AI.
We’re investing to train everyone. And your support of that is why we can all be positioned to lead globally because of the talent. So thank you for your investments. We look forward to continuing to partner both in bringing more companies here and in continuing to invest in our people so that we can be a part of the vision that you have so clearly laid out. Thank you.
Thank you, June. Now we go to Adobe. Thank you, Shantanu. basically provides creative services. Thank you.
Namaste, Pradhan Mantriji. I first wanted to start off by saying what you talked about this morning about Manav or the human vision really resonated in terms of accountability, accessibility, and inclusion particularly. The last time we met, you had specifically asked us to focus on creativity at the WAVES conference. And so in terms of an update, I just wanted to let you know we’re deeply committed. And yesterday, in conjunction with your ministry, we announced that all of our AI products, Photoshop, Acrobat, and Firefly will be available free for students so that students can get the right skills to create the creative economy that you are interested in ensuring that India is at the forefront of. In addition to that, you said that we really need to focus on content and content provenance.
And so the watermarking that you had talked about and making sure that we take care of that is also we have now announced a content authenticity initiative. And so we’re very pleased. We’re clear that there’s a massive future for AI, and at Adobe we’re really proud to be part and to work in conjunction with your government to make that happen. Thank you.
Thank you, Shantanu. We go to Raj from FedEx, one of the big users of AI.
Thank you very much, Prime Minister Modi Ji. Very nice to see you again, and thank you for putting this Global AI Summit here together. We at FedEx move the world’s high -value supply chains of the world every day, $2 trillion of commerce, and we do this with 700 planes and 200 ,000 motorized vehicles. But our mission is to make supply chains smarter for everyone. And when we move this, we also generate two petabytes of data. And AI, that’s where AI comes in, AI superpowers our data to make supply chains smarter for everyone. We have been working very heavily in India. As I mentioned to you when I met you, the cost of logistics in India from 15 % to bring it down to 8%.
And with PM Gatishakti plan as well as the national logistics policy, so we are very much involved in that. We are also investing very much in India. I was just in Navi, Mumbai yesterday. We announced the groundbreaking of our hub in Navi, Mumbai with Patnavisji and also with the Adani Group. So we are very excited to be investing in India. We are investing about 10 ,000 crores in India in this time frame and doubling in the next three years. Thank you again. Thank you very much for having us here today.
Thank you Raj, we now move to Tokita -san from Fujitsu
Thank you for organizing a great meeting thank you very much Fujitsu is the only one technology company in Japan that can develop supercomputers and quantum computers and we are discussing and collaborating with the Japanese government for an AI -led society this is because in order to process a huge amount of data generated from people’s lives and all economic activities a computing platform with high performance and high power saving performance is necessary I believe that there is a lot to learn from India in the transition and transformation of an AI -led society in Japan in addition there are many issues that we should work on together Thank you very much Thank you very much those initiatives will definitely be a good lesson for many other countries.
One of the challenges of an AI -driven society is data sovereignty, which requires safe and reliable data space, as well as protecting human dignity, which should also think about the dignity of data. AI should function for people and must not have human dignity. For this reason, I think it’s important not only to promote the evolution of AI, but also to ensure the safety and reliability of data at the same time. Technology evolves day by day, but I think it’s also important to continue to have the ethics that we have in our society, that the technology should have, not just following the benefits. which is also working on research and implementation of ethics that AI should have.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Tokita -san. Brad from Microsoft, who has been one of the leaders in AI thinking.
Well, thank you, and thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, for bringing the world together. Thank you for your vision this morning. It’s certainly one that we at Microsoft embrace. As you know, we are investing here. We’re building here. We’re partnering. We’re skilling. We are devoted to India’s present and future, and we’re very bullish on the prospects for AI leadership. There’s really just one comment that I would add to the others that so many people, I think, have offered so well already. I have long believed that the Indian and American IT sectors, often do their best work when they work together. We’ve long strived to be a voice for the Indian IT sector’s needs in Washington, D .C., and we partner together around the world.
Despite the enormous success of both of our countries, we still live in a world where 70 % of the world’s GDP is elsewhere. And so, so much of our success inevitably comes not just from what we do in our own two countries, but our ability to take what we offer and take it with trust to the rest of the world. As we’re working through what is obviously, let’s just say, an interesting time in international relations, as countries need to protect their digital sovereignty, as we thrash out trade issues, I hope with your help and leadership, we can all find ways to protect all the things that need to be protected. while ensuring that technology and technology services can cross borders.
If India and the United States can be a role model for the rest of the world, then that will help us all. It will help us create jobs in India and the United States and do what we do best, bring what we create to the rest of the world as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Brad. And now we go to Mr. Roy Jakobs, Philips, who is using AI in so many medical equipment.
Thank you so much. And compliments for the address this morning. I think the vision you’re laying out is building on a strong tradition in which India is leading in informatics and software and now wants to charge ahead also in AI. And when you said it’s all about what we can design in India and deliver to the world, that’s something that Philips actually is already doing. Thank you for having me today. if you look to our innovation capacity half of what we deploy, 1 .7 billion of investment is in software and AI of which majority is done out of India and actually we believe we can do more also for India and we engaged successfully today with your Ministry of Health to see how we can on a data level support you on your new digital act the Eisman digital act where we can make sure that these data turn into better outcomes for the Indian public secondly we connected how we can help your primary care centers and the ASHA workers with technology they can use in an easy manner to actually for example address pregnancy challenges but also cardiac challenges in communities and therefore actually start to address these challenges early on before they become bigger and more expensive to deal with a bigger impact on the population later on we also discussed how we can help in transparent and regulated AI, because you clearly say it’s about we need to trust AI.
AI needs to support people and therefore needs to be able to do that in a trustworthy manner, which needs to be regulated, but it’s not easy as it goes so fast. So what is it that we can actually share from our learnings and how we can regulate ourselves, but also how we can regulate together so that actually brings the biggest benefit for patients, as we know that it also has side effects that you need to regulate. Last but not least, we would like to offer also to really work of unlocking big part of the data sets that you have. You have a huge amount of data in India, but they’re not that easy accessible for research and development purposes, but also even for use within country.
I think that’s another step that would unlock the full power of AI. And as a brand that is 97 years in India, seen as an Indian household brand, we believe we have a responsibility to support you, and we would really like to step up. We would like to step up with you in the field of AI for the benefit of the Indian population. Thank you so much.
Thank you and now we go to the automobile sector Mr. Michael Johnson. I think he’s not there engine Mr. Sébastien Fabre.
Prime Minister thank you very much for hosting this event and for inviting us for those who don’t know us we are AI we do artificial intelligence for intelligence defense and industry. An AI that must be trusted by their users given the criticality of the application and thank you very much for attending our demo this morning just wanted to come back on one point sovereignty to me sovereignty is not isolation sovereignty is about open architecture modular architecture being able to deploy AI on sovereign infrastructure leveraging sovereign data And given the nature of our business, we had to actually embark that in our design from the start. So I just wanted to say that we are very aligned with the values you are projecting.
And at Safran, we’ve been in India for 65 years. Make it in India is in our DNA. We will double our presence by 2030. And we are very committed to support the deployment of a sovereign AI for India. Thank you.
And as demand for memory goes up, demand for Mr. Sanjay Mehrotra goes up. Micron.
Thank you, Ashwini. Namaste, Prime Minister Modi. Really inspired by your vision, the mana vision for AI this morning. And memory and storage is very much a key enabler, essential element of AI. Simply put, if AI is the engine of the digital economy, then memory is the fuel of AI. And I’m very proud that Micron is here in India, February 28th, in your presence. We’ll be honored to have you there as we have the grand opening of the largest semiconductor single -story clean room, 500 ,000 square feet of clean room, size of 10 cricket fields. This is about steel that is used here is about three and a half times of the steel in Eiffel Tower, size of 100 Olympic pools of concrete into this.
All of this coming to fruition here with production already started there of assembly and test, advanced packaging of memory here in India. 2 ,000 team members already working on this, going toward 5 ,000 as we continue to ramp up. In just one short year of the 5 ,000, full production in that factory. 10 % of Micron’s global production will be assembled and tested here in India, and this percentage will continue to increase from here on. If you just look at what that means, it’s about multiple hundreds of millions of chips that will be assembled and packaged here using advanced semiconductor technology. This would not have been possible without the support of your government, always listening in terms of what is needed to become world -class and acting quickly.
Today, last year’s union budget codified the advanced pricing agreement. This year’s budget has strengthened it further with a two -year timeline to conclude APA negotiations. This is important for us, not just for Micron, but for the entire semiconductor ecosystem, because this provides certainty, ease of doing business, and we really appreciate all the initiatives that the government has in this regard. We look forward. to sharing your vision and working with very many of the global leaders here to meet the requirements of memory, to address the full potential of AI, and really build the future of intelligence for all together here. Thank you.
Thank you, Sanjay. And anybody who wants to have ATMP services in India, there are eight plants which are coming online in the coming couple of years. So please do consider for your fabless companies, wherever you get them fab, have them ATMPed in India. And very soon the fab will also come. Great. We move to Cristiano from Qualcomm.
happening in electronics and semiconductors. I think the initiatives to make a hub of electronics manufacturing as well as a semiconductor supply chain are very, very important. And as you think about the transition, we have seen that this technology is going to create a transition, is going to change many of what is assumed, you know, to be the major players. New players are going to come, and it creates an opportunity also for India to have a global role. We’re incredibly excited about this. I think the opportunity is really tremendous. We’re very thankful and privileged to be part of this. And we just, you know, we have a significant R &D that we do here in India.
And just this week, you know, the first two -nanometer chip in India has been designed by our team. I thank Mr. Vesnav to be part. And I thank Mr. Vesnav to be part of the launching. And I think we just need to keep going. This is going to be an incredible future. Thank you so much for the opportunity for me here, and thank you for the partnership.
Thank you, Cristiano. And gentlemen, after AMD, Intel, Renaissance, I think Qualcomm is next to do the two nanometer chip design in India end to end. That is the vision our honorable prime minister has given to all of us. Make sure that the most advanced chips are designed in India, fabricated, ATMP’d and finally getting into the product in India. Thank you, Cristiano, for starting that two nanometer chip here. Now we go to Jitu from Cisco. Please do more. Make in India.
Namaste, Pradhan Mantriji. Bharat na pragati na joyi na bhuvva janam. And, you know, Cisco’s commitment to India goes back 30 years. We’ve had over 35 ,000 employees that we are lucky to employ over here. We have manufacturing that is now happening in India, not just for India, but for export. throughout the world. And we are also investing very heavily in skilling, where we’ve actually just last year trained about 800 ,000 Indians with skills in cybersecurity and AI and networking. So it’s an honor to play a small role in the success of India. And the next 30 years we feel are going to be far more exciting than even the past 30 that we’ve had. And, you know, as you start to democratize AI, we would love to make sure that we partner with India in providing the underlying infrastructure so that that does not become a constraint for the realization of benefits in AI.
And we also want to make sure that AI can be safe and secure for the use by every citizen in India and beyond. So it’s an honor to be an Indian and born in India and actually move to America and see the level of progress that’s been made. And I thank you for… For real. the partnership between the two countries.
Thank you, Jeetu. You didn’t touch Make in India, though. You have to commit before, Honorable Prime Minister.
We’re very committed to Make in India. We’ve actually already had a full note and we will continue to keep investing in there.
Thank you. We go to Cybersecurity. Mr. Matthew Prince, CloudFare.
Thank you, Honorable Prime Minister. I appreciate your remarks and especially your vision. CloudFare, the company I run, is not an AI company directly, but instead we provide the rails and the guardrails for most of the AI companies and much of the Internet. Inspired by your remarks and as a bit of a neutral provider, I would propose a framework to judge our progress at this summit and as these powerful technologies evolve. First, there should be 500 ,000 AI companies, not five. As you said in your remarks this morning, this needs to be open and for the students of India and around the world to be able to extend it, embrace it, and it’s not to be captured. Second, there needs to be a business model for journalists, content creators, and small businesses, because left to its own, AI takes but doesn’t always give back.
Third, AI should embrace and enhance our unique culture and values, not homogenize them. We shouldn’t make the same mistakes we made with the Internet, where everything goes back to the United States and the global south is sometimes left behind. Fourth, AI should be a tool for all, including students, as you mentioned, and the poorest members of the global south. And that’s something that we work very hard at Cloudflare to ensure will happen. And so Cloudflare wants to be a partner with India to realize your vision and move forward in those fundamental framework goals. We’re investing here. Building. A research facility here. And making this one of the places we will build the technologies that will power the future.
But beyond that, we’ve taken the technologies of today and made sure that they’re accessible. For example, rolling out AI for Bharat across our entire network, supporting all of the languages of India and making it available at the lowest price as possible so that anyone in India can take care of this. And Indian startups are the second largest cohort in our incubator program. And we’re, in universities, training and providing free credits to use CloudFlare’s infrastructure so that in India, the next great AI startups and companies can be built. Thank you for your leadership, and please know we are at your service. Thank you.
And Nikesh from Palo Alto, another leading cybersecurity company.
Namaskar, Pradhan Muthuji. As a world’s leading cybersecurity company, our mission is to deliver this AI vision safely and securely. If what Dev is saying is going to happen, that we will have ten times the industrial revolution in India, we will have ten times the industrial revolution in India, and ten times the speed. we have to deliver that in such a way that it does not cause social disruption it is a challenge, as Sam said that if you are going to put this in the hands of 1 .8 billion people you have to make sure that we’re upskilling at the same time as these jobs start transforming from what they are today in line with what Matthew said in terms of making sure there is a role in the future for all the people who rely on their creative capabilities in addition to that as we go towards this future as rapidly as we are going and we start talking about agents who are going to act autonomously there is a large question of governance and accountability who is responsible for these agents who are you going to hold responsible if something goes wrong who is going to provide the moral backbone or the nuanced requirements that agents must have just the way humans have humans have human judgment they have collaboration capability they have skills which we have to find a way of making sure it gets imbibed into these agents as we start thinking of an agentic future Last but not the least, at the speed at which we are going, where we’re seeing an arms race between the AI leaders, they are not spraying as much heat to the needs of doing this in a secure manner.
There is a challenge that AI could go rogue on us if the kill switches are not developed while we’re building AI. There is a challenge that AI could be taken over by nation states or other companies who can cause harm if this is not built in a secure and safe manner. Towards that end, we have established an AI security competence center in Bangalore. We have over 1 ,500 people, and we’re going to make sure that India becomes a center where we build these capabilities from a governance accountability, from a cybersecurity, and from a social upskilling and social impact perspective. Thank you very much, Mr. Prime Minister, for your leadership, and we look forward to working with the government on this.
Thank you, Nikesh. We go to the Captains of Indian Industry, Mr. Mukesh Ambani.
Most respected Prime Minister. Thank you for this roundtable. The Manav vision that you presented at the summit this morning, I’m sure will become the AI manifesto for the world. It provides for me the moral compass for humanity in today’s uncertain time. Prime Minister, under your leadership in 2014, you gave the call for digital India. At that time, India was 138th in the world in terms of mobile and broadband connectivity. Today, we are number one in the world under your leadership. We have deployed world -class digital infrastructure for over a billion people, efficiently, inclusive and transparently. And within a single decade, scale has no longer India’s constraint. It is now India’s unique advantage. India missed the bus at the time of the first industrial revolution.
Demis and all others think that the AI revolution is 10 times bigger because India is as ready as any other country in the world to take advantage of AI revolution. With your leadership, you forced us to put all our 5G networks. So as far as all the roads for AI are ready up to the last village in India and we are absolutely ready. Four days ago, you said that you will invite the world’s data and intelligence to reside in India. With this, what we are familiar with, which is sab ka saath, sab ka vikas. And that means like everybody together and everybody’s progress has now changed to my mind to dunya ka saath, dunya ka vikas.
You have given a vision for the world. Respected Prime Minister, earlier today, as Reliance and Jio, we committed that in this opportunity, over the next seven years, starting this year, we will invest 10 lakh crores of rupees in intelligence. And this is patient, disciplined, nation -building capital designed to create durable economic value and strategic resilience for decades to come. I am grateful to you for having spent time a few days ago and encouraged all the young people who are working on this. My second commitment is that, as Reliance, we will work on the more difficult social areas of education, healthcare, agriculture, apart from, of course, consumer and enterprises, which are there, and we will prioritize them.
Our view is that AI will be accelerating not only economic growth but also job creation the way we will handle this with your leadership. Guided by your Manav -centric AI vision, it will be Jio’s endeavor to make intelligence not only democratic but affordable for every Indian. And we will partner with all the startups, with all the research institutions and the global companies present here to not only treat India as a consumption market but to treat India as an innovation market where we can develop and make an India and serve India first and then serve the rest of the world. Thank you, Prime Minister, for all your leadership and inspiration. Thank you.
Thank you. And Mr. Natarajan Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Group, next to you.
Honorable Prime Minister, firstly, I would like to congratulate you for hosting this AI Impact Summit at such an aspirational scale and the convening power that India has displayed in getting all of us together. Thank you so much. The second point I want to make is while all the AI companies, technology companies, industrial companies and all of us will do everything that we need to do to advance AI and also make AI work for the society, the individuals and businesses. Your role, your leadership, which you exhibited this morning. In defining what AI should do. for responsibly making progress. First, you exhibited enormous confidence in the positive power of AI. And you also exhibited what the potential of AI could be.
And you clearly outlined what it means to have a human central leadership, a open, shared, collaborative leadership. This is setting the agenda for all countries and all businesses and societies. Thank you for that leadership. The second point I want to make is AI has two important characteristics, like many other characteristics. One is ambition. And by ambition I mean it helps those who are ambitious to achieve that ambition. Second one is skill. Under your leadership, India has the same two qualities, ambition and wanting to scale. I think with these two coming together, we are naturally well positioned to lead in the AI world for the good of the world. Third, Honourable Prime Minister, on behalf of the Tata Group, I want to say that we will do everything that we need to do in three important areas.
One is scaling the nation. As he said in this morning, it is about ensuring that every citizen is empowered. Second, we will build the AI infrastructure across all the layers from the hardware layer all the way to chips and data centres and agent TKI and data, etc. to make an impact. Third, we will build the AI infrastructure across all the layers from the hardware layer all the way to chips and data centres and agent TKI and data, etc. to businesses around the world and also help in India’s journey in social transformation. Thank you again for the opportunity and your vision and leadership. Thank you. We have
Mr. Mittal from Airtel.
Honorable Prime Minister, at the outset, let me congratulate you for an amazingly successful AI Impact Summit. India, and we are all as Indians fortunate to have you as a leader who understands the power of technology. I have watched you for long years, and the way you have guided this country through the power of technology is absolutely incredible. You directed some of us to launch 5G networks in the shortest possible time frame. I still recall your words, I want it launched in 10 months. And your inspirational leadership made it possible for us to make it happen. 5G across every square kilometer of this country. You knew that this country will need a bedrock of stability, a very strong network on which the fanciful new wave of technologies will ride.
Today, connectivity through fiber, submarine cables, data centers, towers all across the country is in place, Honorable Prime Minister. And you should be very proud that India today leads that race by putting a smartphone, a computer in the hands of every citizen of this country at $2 a month for unlimited amount of data that they use. We will keep on nourishing these arteries. We’ll keep on building the muscles of the data centers, fiber. And we will ensure that this wonderful invention of AI are brought to our billion customers in the country at the most cheapest frugal way. You have assembled an amazing set of people here in this room today. The world’s entire AI technology industry is sitting here.
they should note that India could do a moon mission, the Gaganyaan, with $74 million against the U .S. spending over $92 billion to do a similar moon landing. And India did the moon landing on the difficult side of the moon highly successful. The world leaders can pick up frugal innovation from our country and use the very large base that we offer the customer for their own benefit. Together, Honorable Prime Minister, your vision will resonate with the entire globe of making AI democratic, AI available to all for the benefit of humanity. India is connected to the destiny of India. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Mr.Mittal. And Mr. Nandan Nilakani, Chairman of Infosys, we would like to hear from you what you are doing for this transition.
No, I’ll talk about something. Prime Minister Modi, first of all, congratulations. Congratulations on a fantastic summit. It’s really been great. I want to talk about AI diffusion in India with an example. When I met Prime Minister Modi on 8th January and talked about applying AI to farmers, he said, why can’t we apply it to cows and cattle? Because if the cow is sick, it can’t tell you that it is sick. How can you solve this problem? And he gave us his vision of applying AI to agriculture and dairy. The same day, the PMO had a meeting along with Mr. Krishnan and Abhishek of METI with Amul and with some of my colleagues. And within three weeks, the application went live.
The meeting was on Jan 8th. It went live on February 11th. This is the world’s largest cooperative with 3 .6 million farmers, 2 billion milk transactions per year. and 40 million cattle. And today, all these farmers, a large number of them being women, use the Sarla Ben application and actually get real responses about their cattle, their problems, their pregnancy, their milk production, and so on. Look at the speed of diffusion. An idea that the PM had on Jan 8 has become reality on Feb 11. This, to me, is an example of the speed of execution of AI diffusion in India. And I get the same sense of excitement I got on December 30, 2016, when the PM launched the Bheem payment application on UPI.
And when he launched that application, he started something where today we have 21 billion transactions a month with 500 million users and the world’s largest payment system. I feel the same sense that AI is at that point. And with his leadership and vision of how AI can be used for the benefit of Indians, common man, farmers, workers, and so on, I think it’s going to really take off. Moreover, this is also designed for sovereign data. The data of Amul remains with Amul, and design is to make sure that it’s within India. So it’s really a great example, and I think by the time many of these people come back in a few months, there’ll be many, many more applications, and India will lead the world on showing how AI diffusion can matter to improve the lives of common man, farmers, students, patients, and so on.
And I think this is where the AI road, the race to the top is going to happen, and thank you for your leadership, sir. Thank you, Dandan.
We have a respected industry leader from Sweden, Mr. Marcus Wallenberg.
Honorable Prime Minister, I want to congratulate you on amassing such force behind the AI initiative. it is amazing to see what your inspirational leadership can do and it reminds me very much of when you launched Make in India you got a similar very positive wave behind you so I represent a number of companies who are active in India since many many years over 100 years actually in the case of Ericsson and I believe that this idea about pushing the AI initiative will be very very supportive for future business of these companies in India over the years because you have through many of your IT companies provided support all over the world for digitization and you have a lot of support from the IT companies but now when you’re moving into AI I think that a lot of the investments that already have been carried through the companies that we are close to, like ABB and AstraZeneca, et cetera, et cetera, will be even further enhanced.
And I think this will position, your initiative here will position India as an even better place for investment and development of their businesses. So thank you. And I also want to say that on behalf of Mr. Johansson, who was called upon earlier but not here, Saab is not a car company, it’s a defense company, and it’s also operating here. Very thankful for the good reception from the Indian government and continue to develop their efforts and products and services within the AI field and hope to serve the Indian government going forward. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. My apologies for having that car company thing. We now go to Mr. Rishi Sunak, who’s currently leading the enrichment project, and the former Prime Minister of UK. Thank you, Minister.
When I hosted the first AI summit in Bletchley Park a few years ago, I never imagined that the journey would take us to this incredible event here in New Delhi. And I think that’s testament to your leadership, Prime Minister Modi Ji, but also the vibrancy of the AI ecosystem that we’ve been hearing about, and of course the incredible optimism and energy of the Indian people that’s been on full display these past few days. And it’s that magical combination that I think is why, Minister, this morning you were able to remind us all that according to Stanford University’s authoritative global index, index, India has now been ranked a leading global AI superpower. What you were too polite to say this morning, to spare Demis and my blushes, is that you leapfrogged the UK to get into that position.
Although I did check, and I can gently point out that England remains just ahead of India in the ICC test rankings, so not all is lost. The special and distinctive thing about these summits is that they bring together not just leaders from government, but also all of you, leaders from industry. And when I did that originally, it was in recognition of the fact that this technology is largely being developed in the private sector. And to put it in context, just this year, the companies represented in this room will spend 20 times more to develop this technology than the United States spent on the entire. Manhattan Project. So all of you in this room, I occupy a very significant role.
in what is about to happen. And I know many of you personally, and I know all of you are driven by values, and you take that privilege position seriously and recognise that it comes with responsibilities. So maybe because, Minister, I can’t offer to invest a billion dollars to make something in India, I can instead actually join Prime Minister Modi to request something of all of you in this room, and that’s to think about two particular responsibilities that the Prime Minister outlined this morning in his manner of vision. And the first is to develop this technology responsibly, safely and securely. I still remember the meeting I had with Demis, Dario and Sam all together in Downing Street where we spoke through these issues a few years ago, and I think they would be the first to say that the pace of acceleration in this technology means that those conversations we have are even more relevant today.
And what I’d ask is that the Prime Minister that we maintain the transparency. the dialogue between government and all of your companies, engagement, and then at the appropriate moment, talk about governance as it’s required. We must maintain the trust and confidence of our citizens as this technology develops. And remember that our first duty as elected leaders is to ensure their safety. And then the second responsibility I’d ask of all of you is to ensure that this technology benefits everyone, everywhere. And we had a very compelling vision of that this morning. We talk a lot about AI raising the ceiling, but we need to make sure that it also lifts the floor for humanity. And for me in particular, I think that means in health care and education, because those are the two foundational things that give all of us dignity and opportunity.
And AI has the potential to be, I think, both the most uplifting, democratizing, and positive force that any of us have all known. Bye. it’s up to everyone in this room to make sure that that becomes a reality and deliver on the vision that the Prime Minister set out this morning. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Rishi. We go to Mr. Enrico Bagnasco from Sparkle.
Thank you and a special thank to you, Prime Minister Modi, for the vision you shared this morning and for this event. SPACL is one of the main international telecom carriers connecting currently 40 countries worldwide. We design, deploy and operate long distance submarine optical cables. So we deploy one of the key enabling infrastructure to support digital services and to support the AI revolution. We have been operating in India for 28 years out of our Mumbai offices. and work with great success to all the key Indian carriers represented here, by the way. And we’re now a fully licensed operator, so we plan to continue to remain, invest, and deploy our facilities here. We are currently deploying together with Google the Blue Raman subsea cable, which will connect with a new infrastructure, Milano, Italy, with Mumbai, India, through a new diversified route.
So thank you again for your vision. We’re here to stay and to support your deployment. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much. Now Mr. Giordano Albertazzi from Vertiv.
resolve was there before these meetings, hearing directly from you your vision, now the resolve is even stronger. So, count on Vertiv, just like many of our customers that sit around this table, can count on us for an expansion of our manufacturing, our engineering, our service presence in India. So, I couldn’t be more thrilled to be here today and certainly to be part of this adventure in India and globally. A big thank you. Thank you.
We have His Excellency, Mr. Mansour Ibrahim Al -Mansouri from G42. The floor is yours.
Thank you, Prime Minister. It’s an honor to be here, and under your leadership, you have elevated technology from a sector to a nation, building infrastructure. Thank you. and you are building a foundation for sovereign intelligence and economic growth. And we in Abu Dhabi, we share the same convictions, where AI is no longer a productivity tool but a core infrastructure. And our company, G42, the national champion through its business units, is delivering two large factories of the future. First, a token factory to serve intelligence at scale, and second, agent factory to empower enterprise at scale. And this is not done in isolation, but with strategic partners, many of whom are in this room today. We are working in a great collaboration.
And Prime Minister, we believe that nations should always build the strongest intelligence infrastructure and cross -border partnership that will define the next century of economic growth. And the UAE believes India is a partner, and let us build. Let us build this partnership and lead the future together. Thank you.
We now come to the investment category. Hemant from General Catalyst, please do share your investment plans.
Shree, Prime Minister Modiji, congratulations on an amazing conference, and thank you for your leadership. I think focusing on trying to align AI with human centricity is something we need as a global perspective, and we need a lot more of it. This is India’s moment to lead. So when I think about the last 15 years, the work India did in leapfrogging in identity in financial payments with Azhara and UPI, I think India’s got a similar opportunity to do in the applied AI layer. And so… And the way India can lead is with one mindset of abundance. How does AI really empower everybody? in health care, in education, in a way that you can uplift the lives of not only the billion and a half people in India, but do that worldwide.
And I have a deep belief that the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India is going to deliver some incredible global leaders that are focusing on this problem. One of the things that’s really top of mind for me is India’s got one of the youngest demographics entering the workforce, and there’s an opportunity to lead in empowering that workforce with AI rather than resisting the diffusion of AI and the jobs created with it as a source of eliminating opportunity for them. If everybody had the productivity of AI in the Indian workforce, it would no doubt create an amazing country and an amazing opportunity for the rest of the world. We’re deeply believing in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We’ve been investing in some incredible companies.
We’ve been investing in companies over the last few years. and we’re heavily doubling down on our investment, and we’ve agreed to invest about $5 billion in the next five years in the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem. Thrilled to be doing that, and thank you for creating the conditions for that opportunity.
Thank you, Mr. Taneja, for the $5 billion pledge that you have taken. Mr. Vinod Khosla, one of the most respected persons from the IT community.
Thank you, and namaste. I’m most excited by what AI can do to not only help me meet the India 2047 vision, but far exceed it. I believe in the real era of abundance by them, but AI adoption needs the permission of the people. Capitalism, in my view, which is a great tool for progress, is by permission of democracy and the votes of the people. So because of that, I feel the first thing we should do and aggressively do is bring AI in services to the people. And my favorite few services is to add free AI tutors for every child in the country, all 250 million of them, free AI doctors for every one of its citizens, and free agronomists for all the small farmers that are so important, such an important part of the vote bank and the permission we need to apply AI.
It is very clear to me that the 2030s will be a chaotic era. There will be disruption. There will be large changes. And so before we get to that stage and people are tolerant about the progress and the uncertainty that it creates at the same time, that we should really have every single Indian benefiting from these services so they understand the power that AI can bring. So these, in my view, should be part of Aadhaar. Just like UPI is part of Aadhaar, AI doctors should be an Aadhaar service, AI tutors should be an Aadhaar service, and AI agronomists should be Aadhaar services. So the hard part in Aadhaar is done already, and I think this can bring real benefit to mass and large number of Indians and have them appreciate.
What AI can do. Having said that. On the investment side, India is just a wonderful area for us. We were one of the early investors in Sarvam as the sovereign AI model, something we believed in for a long time. Emergent, which is one of the fastest growing companies anywhere I’ve seen, has grown to 100 million in the last eight months. So India has great talent. We have healthcare companies, two of them making very radical innovations in how healthcare is applied. The way to make more money in healthcare is not to do more surgeries or more procedures. It is to have a model that’s aligned with consumers and the cost of providing service, which is generally the paying entity.
Wuhan, another one, has $40 million. Indian workers providing people like Swiggy and… Flipkart and others with workers. They’re hiring half a million workers a month now out of their 40 million database and AI is absolutely essential to talk to this many people about what job is the right fit for them. So thank you. I appreciate the time you’re spending and making sure that the ecosystem is rich. But I do think we should start with benefits for the people in these essential services. Thank you,
Mr. Khosla. Lightspeed is very active here in India in the tech space. Ravi, your turn.
Hi, thank you, Prime Minister Modi, for organizing this really amazing global AI event that focused both on how AI can and benefit India but also the rest of the world. It’s an honor to be here. Lightspeed has invested in Indian technology startups for the past 17 years. We’ve committed close to a billion dollars in that time and have plans to significantly increase our investments as we move into the sort of AI generation of technology. We also, along with my colleague Vinod, are large investors in Sarvam, which is providing sovereign AI capabilities to India and has worked closely with your administration, as well as several other emerging artificial intelligence startups. And we believe there’s, in India, a dual opportunity as we move into the AI era.
The first, India represents the largest single AI consumption market in the democratic world. India’s opportunity is to build real -world applications at real -world scale, and that’s… essentially unmatched. We think that the Indian economy also has great breadth, including agriculture, manufacturing services, healthcare, education, financial inclusion, and government at scale. These are all places that create new opportunities for artificial intelligence innovation. The second major opportunity, we believe, for technology innovation where venture capital funding can accelerate innovation is India’s ability to provide technology talent density as one of its greatest exports for AI. We’ve already seen some of the largest AI developer communities form in India, and they are continuing to grow. And they’ve been showing the ability to build.
They’re transformative products which can serve both India and the rest of the world. Thank you.
Thank you. And with this, we have covered practically all the layers of the AI stack. We have covered models. We have covered services, infra, compute, from funding to overall the conventional, the machine makers, the industry leaders. Thank you all for sharing your views. Now I’ll request Honorable Prime Minister Shendarendra Modiji, sir, kindly for your views and your guidance to us. Thank you.
Friends, I understand that in governance, I have been working for many years. I once called Shikha. I said, you teach this to the people of my defense. So Shikha has, I had a daughter with her. So my effort is, I have met almost everyone. I have met everyone from time to time. I have spoken because I have, and whenever I have met you, I have tried to learn, to understand, to understand. My effort is that we should together, like a traveler, like a co -traveler, keep these targets and these directions in mind and achieve our goal. We should definitely try in that direction. And I have faith. that globally also, this talent in that talent pool can also be associated with India.
I have told Sanjay many times, Sanjay Shahi will be the most patent owner here. So I said to Sanjay, you should also this patent world, give them this kind of habit from lab. They are also understanding, they are doing the work. So I have disappointed whoever I told you. You have given time, you have contributed your experience, and because of that you must have seen that whenever I have to meet, I keep giving you some new work. And you give me after doing it. And the work that you do, the habit of making it work a little more is of a human. So it is also mine, that when you do this, then you make it work more.
This will be my profession. but I assure you that there will be a relationship of policies and whatever changes we have to make we are ready to take it down the ground work we have to do the government is ready and I am not working from a limited angle I believe that this is the way of humanity and that is why I have to give it strength the coming generations will be blessed and that is why I said this morning there is a group of people who see fear in this there is a group of people who see the future in this I represent that group of people who see the future in this and I am not saying that some people have fear and some people have fortune I am not a person of fear I am a person of faith in fortune and that is why I believe that the path we are on and the faith we are on we will get the right results I will once again you all took out time you gave valuable thoughts and commitment of cooperation commitment of moving forward so this is our partnership it is a different situation and for global good for a good for a good cause so I am sure that we will get the right results I am very grateful to you.
Thank you very much.
“Sundar Pichai thanked Prime Minister Modi and said India is poised to be a global AI leader because of its talent and ecosystem”
The knowledge base records Sundar Pichai opening his keynote by thanking Prime Minister Modi and expressing confidence that India will have an extraordinary AI trajectory, highlighting its talent and ecosystem [S5] and [S13].
“Dario Amodei of Anthropic said India must play a central role in amplifying AI benefits and managing its risks”
Anthropic’s statements confirm Amodei’s view that India can be a partner and leader in addressing AI security and economic risks, emphasizing a central role for the country [S144].
“Google’s commitment will span TPUs, cloud infrastructure, research collaborations and partnerships across agriculture, healthcare and language access”
While the transcript notes Google’s broad partnership ambitions with India, the knowledge base does not detail specific technology components such as TPUs or sector-specific collaborations, providing only general confirmation of a partnership intent [S13].
“Anthropic is seeking deeper AI cooperation with India and sees the country as a partner in guiding global AI risk responses”
Anthropic’s public statements elaborate on its desire for deeper cooperation with India, reinforcing the claim of a partnership focus and adding nuance about specific collaborative goals [S144].
The round‑table displayed a strong, multi‑sectoral consensus that AI will be a transformative, high‑impact technology; that its benefits must be democratized through open‑source models, widespread access and public‑private investment; that massive up‑skilling and capacity‑building programmes are essential; and that responsible governance, ethics and data sovereignty are non‑negotiable. A shared commitment to affordable, frugal delivery and to building the full AI stack—from chips and memory to services and governance—underpinned the dialogue.
High consensus across government, multinational corporations, venture capitalists and sectoral leaders, indicating a unified strategic direction for India’s AI ecosystem that combines ambitious investment with inclusive, responsible deployment.
The summit displayed broad consensus on AI’s transformative potential and the need for inclusive, secure, and skilled deployment. However, clear disagreements emerged around the preferred model for AI provision (open‑source vs proprietary), the mechanism for universal access (public‑utility/Aadhaar integration vs private‑sector platforms), and the scale of financial commitment (trillion‑rupee national programmes versus multi‑billion‑dollar venture investments). Unexpected philosophical differences on human dignity and an unusual open‑source stance from a European firm added nuance to the debate.
Moderate to high. While participants largely agree on AI’s importance, the divergent views on openness, public versus private delivery, and investment magnitude could affect policy alignment and coordination. These disagreements may lead to parallel tracks of development—government‑driven public‑utility initiatives alongside private‑sector proprietary ecosystems—potentially fragmenting the AI landscape unless reconciled through coordinated frameworks.
The discussion was driven forward by a series of high‑impact interventions that moved the dialogue from aspirational rhetoric to concrete, actionable themes. Early commitments (Sundar Pichai) set a baseline of tangible investment, while Dario Amodei’s call for shared economic data introduced a collaborative governance lens. Warnings about concentration (Arthur Mensch) and the push for open‑source opened a debate on power dynamics, which was deepened by Sam Altman’s democratization framing and reinforced by Matthew Prince’s detailed ecosystem blueprint. Ethical and sovereignty concerns raised by Tokita and later expanded by Nikesh Arora added a security‑and‑accountability dimension. Nandan Nilekani’s rapid‑deployment example and Rishi Sunak’s call for transparency and inclusive uplift crystallized the urgency and responsibility of the AI rollout. Collectively, these pivotal comments redirected the conversation toward concrete investments, open‑source safeguards, sovereign data, inclusive access, and robust governance, shaping a narrative that balances ambition with responsibility.
Disclaimer: This is not an official session record. DiploAI generates these resources from audiovisual recordings, and they are presented as-is, including potential errors. Due to logistical challenges, such as discrepancies in audio/video or transcripts, names may be misspelled. We strive for accuracy to the best of our ability.
