AI century must carry India’s imprint in its infrastructure: Jeet Adani

At AI Impact Summit 2026, Jeet Adani, Director, Adani Digital Labs, outlines energy, compute and services as the three pillars of India’s AI century

by e4m Staff
Published: Feb 19, 2026 5:13 PM | 2 min read

India must decide whether it wants to import intelligence or architect it, said Jeet Adani, Director, Adani Digital Labs, setting the tone at the AI Impact Summit 2026.

Addressing global leaders and innovators, Adani framed artificial intelligence as a geopolitical turning point. “AI is going to redefine sovereignty,” he said, adding that the question before India is no longer adoption but ownership. “Will India import intelligence or architect it? Will we consume productivity or create it?”

He argued that energy, compute and services would define India’s AI century. Calling energy the first pillar, Adani said, “AI is written in code, but it runs on electricity.” Fragile power systems, he warned, would mean fragile intelligence systems. He positioned renewable expansion as strategic infrastructure, noting that “energy security is going to be equivalent to intelligence security.”

On compute and cloud, Adani stressed domestic control. “Cloud sovereignty does not mean isolation, it means autonomy,” he said. Hosting critical AI workloads within India and ensuring access to high performance compute for startups, academia and sectors such as healthcare and manufacturing is essential to avoid “national fragility.”

The third pillar, services sovereignty, focused on ensuring AI boosts domestic productivity. “AI must become a force multiplier for Indian citizens before it becomes a margin multiplier for others,” he said, outlining use cases across agriculture, education, logistics, healthcare and financial inclusion.

In a significant announcement, Adani referenced the group’s commitment to invest $100 billion in a sovereign, green energy powered AI infrastructure platform. He described it as the trigger for a 5-gigawatt integrated energy and compute ecosystem designed to anchor India’s intelligence revolution.

“This is not protectionism, this is preparedness,” he said, adding that the AI century must carry “India’s imprint in its infrastructure, her intelligence and her values.”