Jeet Adani delivered a roadmap for India’s AI supremacy during his keynote at the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi. The Adani Airport Holdings Director asserted Thursday that India won’t just engage with the AI century – it will define it with homegrown smarts, benchmarks, and principles.
India’s past IT boom made it a digital export hub, Adani recalled, but profits largely bypassed the nation. ‘AI hands India the golden opportunity to reverse that trend in this generation,’ he told attendees.
He framed the summit as history’s inflection point, where AI redefines what sovereignty means for nations. Key dilemmas: Rely on imported AI or engineer it locally? Harvest productivity or invent it? Follow others’ tech stacks or pioneer India’s own?
Adani pinpointed three foundational sovereignty elements: energy self-sufficiency, autonomous compute/cloud capabilities, and independent service layers. ‘These aren’t tech buzzwords – they’re the bedrock of today’s patriotism,’ he emphasized.
Intertwined power and data grids demand ironclad energy systems for viable AI, he explained. India’s renewable surge in solar, wind, and storage transcends green agendas; it’s now core to defense strategy. ‘Energy autonomy is intelligence autonomy. Green power will drive our edge,’ Adani forecasted.
He advocated AI-first for domestic empowerment over international gains. Citing Gautam Adani’s landmark reveal this week, the group commits $100 billion to craft India’s sovereign, eco-powered AI infrastructure.
Far beyond data centers, this initiative unleashes a colossal 5 GW-integrated energy-compute powerhouse valued at $250 billion. Seamlessly combining clean energy, grid fortification, and hyperscale processing, it secures India’s AI destiny as powered, protected, and proudly indigenous.