What Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and other tech CEOs said at India AI Impact Summit 2026

The India AI Impact Summit 2026 brought together leaders of the technology industry, including CEOs such as Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, Meta Chief AI scientist Alexandr Wang, K Krithivasan, Tata Consultancy Services, Salil Parekh and others, at Bharat Mandapam for a high-level Opening Ceremony, setting the stage for discussions on responsible AI innovation, scientific advancement and international collaboration.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the event which called for shaping the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through cooperative global effort and ethical development.The list of leaders also included Yann LeCun, former Meta chief AI scientist and a Turing Award winner, and Yoshua Bengio, one of the godfathers of AI. The following attended the opening ceremony:

All were present at Bharat Mandapam for the first major global AI summit to be hosted in the Global South, where $100 billion in investment commitments are on the table.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with these leaders, and addressed the main plenary on February 19. The five-day summit is organised around three pillars – People, Planet, and Progress – and will run across multiple venues in the national capital, including Bharat Mandapam and Sushma Swaraj Bhawan.

Bitcoins The event started by PM Narendra Modi’s address

Artificial intelligence marks a transformative chapter in human history. India is not just a part of the AI revolution, but is leading and shaping it.

Some people have doubts about new technology. But the way the younger generation is embracing AI is unprecedented.There has also been tremendous enthusiasm here regarding the AI Summit exhibition. In the course of human history, there have been certain turning points that shaped entire centuries.

These turning points set the direction of civilisation and transform the pace of development. Artificial intelligence is one such transformation in history.A few tech leaders praised the event, while others committed billions of dollars for AI infrastructure and skilling of Indian youth. Here’s what key tech leaders said on India AI Impact Summit 2026:

Bitcoins Google CEO Sundar Pichai urges companies to pursue AI boldly

Addressing the India AI Action Summit today was a profound personal honor. AI can improve billions of lives and solve some of the hardest problems in science. The best outcomes of AI are not guaranteed. We must pursue AI boldly, approach it responsibly, and work together through this moment.Google is establishing a full-stack AI hub, part of our $15 billion infrastructure investment in India.

Bitcoins CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman says India is one of the biggest markets for AI world

It is amazing to be here, obviously the work happening in India and the adoption of AI is leading the world, and I can’t wait to see what goes next. This will be one of the biggest markets for AI in the world, and I think India will have a huge amount of influence… It (AI) will definitely impact the job market, but we always find new things to do, and I have no doubt we will find lots of better ones this time.

Bitcoins Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind

It is a huge honour to be here today with so many of my esteemed colleagues from industry, academia and government and congratulations to Prime Minister Modi and the Indian government on convening such an impressive summit at this very pivotal moment for AI. It is fantastic to see how the summit has evolved over the years with the first meeting convened by former Prime Minister Sunak. It is becoming an incredibly important convening point for international dialogue and hopefully cooperation over the future of AI.He emphasised that such gatherings have moved beyond optional discussions to becoming essential for the safe and collaborative development of the technology.

Bitcoins Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of Adobe, highlighted the transformative impact of AI

Given the number of people who use AI in India will be greater than, I think, anywhere in the world over a few years, I think the leadership that India can play, not just in what these models mean, how do you think about data, how do you think about privacy and security and trust.

I want every piece of information that’s produced to have the provenance and the watermark so that people can actually know what is real and what’s fake.Adobe is expanding the opportunity for creativity for millions of students across India, empowering them with AI skills, further accelerating Prime Minister Modi’s vision. I look forward to seeing what the students of India create with Adobe’s industry-leading tools, and in doing so accelerating Viksit Bharat.

Bitcoins Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, talks about risk of AI

My fundamental view is that AI has been on an exponential for the la for the last 10 years um and as part of a sort of Moors law for intelligence and that we are now well advanced on that curve and there are only a small number of years for AI models surpassing the cognitive capabilities of most humans for most things. We’re increasingly close to what I’ve called a country of geniuses in a data center. a set of AI agents that are more capable than most humans at most things and can coordinate at superhuman speed.India is the world’s largest democracy. We need to think about how democracies handle AI and how we confront other countries that are authoritarian. Another risk I talk about is making sure that AI systems are safe and predictable and autonomously behave in a way that’s under our control.

Bitcoins Alexandr Wang, Chief AI officer of Meta says India is an important country

If you want to make technology that serves society, Meta has an incredible opportunity to get this technology into people’s lives.

Across India, creators use our AI to automatically translate their Reels into the language of the person watching. Small businesses talk to customers through WhatsApp business agents they created in 10 minutes on their phones, and use our Gen AI tools to create ads and reach customers way more efficiently than they could before.

And, India has world class developers building genius things to solve big societal challenges.We’re releasing new models this year, with the first coming in the next couple of months. These will be deeply integrated with our products in a way we’re really excited about. We’re optimistic about the trajectory we’re on. The first models will be good, and as the year goes on I think we’re going to be pushing the frontier. Our vision is personal superintelligence – AI that knows you, your goals, your interests, and helps you with whatever you’re focused on doing.

It serves you, whoever you are, wherever you are.It’s about collaboration between the public and private sectors – to deliver these four building blocks, and to design and deploy AI that works for your citizens and your economies. I don’t want these amazing technologies to be one-size-fits-all. I want them to serve your needs – designed for the challenges and opportunities that are unique to India, to societies across the global south, and all over the world.

I want them to serve you as an individual.

No matter who you are, where you live, what language you speak, or what culture you’re a part of.

Bitcoins Microsoft president Brad Smith says AI is the ultimate quest

I think this event is hugely important. The world has come to India so that we can think together about what we can do to bring AI to more of the world, especially the global south. And we have more work to do. I think it’s going to require investments, partnerships by tech companies, by other private capital, by governments.

And we have to keep investing in skilling, and that’s a big part of what we’re doing at Microsoft this week.

We unveiled our progress, we’re on a pace to invest $50 billion before the end of the decade to bring AI to the global South, both infrastructure and through skilling. And then we have to make sure that AI works for people. We all know that technology will get better each and every year. The real question is, can we work together to make sure the technology serves people better every year.

That, I think is the ultimate quest on which we should all join together.

Bitcoins Accenture CEO Julie Sweet

The AI Summit has been a great recognition of the importance of countries coming together, private sector and the public sector, and it’s really been a great testimony to the importance of India as well. One of the themes of the Summit has been the importance of inclusive growth and inclusive AI, and I think the fact that there are so many people here from around the world tells you that leaders are committed to this.

Bitcoins Mukesh Ambani, Chairman & Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited, made 3 announcements

Today, on behalf of the Reliance Group and Jio Intelligence, I want to make three announcements. Announcement one, Jio connected India to the internet era. Jio will now connect India to the intelligence era. We will deliver intelligence to every citizen, every sector of the economy, and every facet of social development and every service of government. Jio will do so with the same reliability, quality, scale, and extreme affordability that transformed connectivity.

India cannot afford to rent intelligence. Therefore, we will reduce the cost of intelligence as dramatically as we did the cost of data… Announcement 2, Jio, together with Reliance, will invest 10 lakh crores over the next seven years, starting this year… Announcement 3, Jio Intelligence will build India’s sovereign compute infrastructure through three bold initiatives. One, gigawatt-scale data centres.

We already started construction on multi-gigawatt AI-ready data centres at Jamnagar. Over 120 megawatts will come online in the second half of 2026 this year and a clear path to gigawatt-scale compute for training and large scale inference. Two, our green energy advantage. We have an in-house energy advantage with up to 10 gigawatts of ready green power surplus anchored by solar in both Kutch and Andhra Pradesh. Three, a nationwide edge compute, an edge compute layer deeply integrated with Jio’s network will make intelligence responsive, low latency, and affordable close to where Indians live, learn, and work…

Bitcoins Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran: Al is the next major infrastructure

AI, in my mind, is the next big infrastructure. It is the infrastructure of intelligence.Chandrasekaran framed AI as a transformative infrastructure shift comparable to steam engines, electricity, and the internet. He added that AI tools must reach the “last person,” highlighting how accessibility will define the technology’s societal impact. He cited examples of rapid AI adoption, including rural participants learning and deploying AI tools within hours, to illustrate the technology’s lowering barriers.