New Delhi witnessed a bold vision for India’s role in the artificial intelligence revolution as Jeet Adani, Director of Adani Airport Holdings Limited, addressed the AI Impact Summit 2026 on Thursday. He declared that the question is no longer whether India will participate in the AI century, but whether India will leave its indelible mark on it – through its intelligence, standards, and above all, its values.
Jeet Adani highlighted how India’s IT revolution transformed the nation into a global powerhouse of digital services. Yet, he pointed out a critical flaw: much of the productivity gains flowed to other countries rather than staying within India. ‘The AI revolution offers India a once-in-a-century opportunity to rewrite this equation,’ he emphasized to the audience.
Describing the summit as a ‘decisive turning point in history,’ Adani stressed that AI is set to redefine national sovereignty. The real challenge for India, he said, is not adoption but creation: Will India import intelligence or build it? Will it merely consume productivity or generate it? Will it plug into someone else’s system or architect its own?
He outlined three pillars of sovereignty that will define India’s AI era: energy sovereignty, compute and cloud sovereignty, and service sovereignty. ‘These are not mere technical concepts; they form the foundation of modern nationalism,’ Adani asserted.
A weak energy system, he warned, undermines any intelligence system. In today’s AI age, power grids and data grids are inextricably linked. India’s renewable energy expansion – solar, wind, and storage – has evolved from climate policy to strategic infrastructure imperative. ‘Energy security is becoming synonymous with intelligence security, and sustainable energy will be a competitive advantage,’ he noted.
Adani urged prioritizing AI to empower Indian citizens first before exporting benefits. He referenced his father, Gautam Adani’s recent announcement of a monumental $100 billion investment by the Adani Group to build a sovereign, green-energy-powered AI infrastructure platform for India.
This isn’t just data center expansion, Adani clarified. It’s the launch of a 5-gigawatt, $250 billion integrated energy-compute ecosystem that will underpin India’s ‘intelligence revolution.’ By integrating renewables, grid resilience, and hyperscale computing, this commitment ensures India’s AI future is powered, secure, sovereign, and nationally built.