Bill Gates To Skip Keynote Address At India AI Summit Amid Epstein Files Row

Bill Gates will not deliver the keynote address at the India AI Impact Summit today, his philanthropic organisation, the Gates Foundation, said this morning, amid a row over the Microsoft co-founder's name appearing in the Epstein files.

The Gates Foundation will be represented by Ankur Vora, president of the Africa and India offices, who will speak later today at the summit in New Delhi, the organisation said.

"After careful consideration, and to ensure the focus remains on the AI Summit's key priorities, Mr Gates will not be delivering his keynote address," the Gates Foundation said in a post on X.

The Gates Foundation remains fully committed to our work in India to advance our shared health and development goals, it said.

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— Gates Foundation India (@BMGFIndia) February 19, 2026

Bill Gates' name went missing from the list of key participants for the summit on Tuesday morning, with highly placed sources telling NDTV that the government wishes to "stand with the Epstein survivors". His name, however, had reappeared and was on the agenda last night.

Sources said the government wants the focus on AI deliberations and doesn't want the attention to be spotlighted by anything else.

The summit began on Monday and is the fourth annual international gathering focused on AI, following previous meetings in the UK in 2023, South Korea in 2024, and France in 2025.

The India AI Impact Summit is also the biggest one yet and will bring together heads of more than 20 states and over 500 global AI leaders, including around 100 CEOs and founders.

Bill Gates Named In Epstein Files

Bill Gates was mentioned in the tranche of Epstein files released by the US Justice Department last month.

In a draft email among the documents, Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sexual offender who died by suicide in a US prison in 2019, alleged Gates engaged in extramarital affairs, writing that his relationship with Gates ranged from "helping Bill to get drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with russian girls, to facilitating his illicit trysts, with married women."

Gates has expressed regret over "every minute" he spent with Epstein.

"Every minute I spent with him, I regret, and I apologise," he told 9News Australia this month.

"That email was never sent. The email is false," he said. "I don't know what his thinking was there. Was he trying to attack me in some way?"

He said that he met Epstein in 2011 and had several dinners with him over three years but never visited his Caribbean island and didn't have relations with women.

"The focus was always, he knew a lot of very rich people, and he was saying he could get them to give money to global health. In retrospect, that was a dead end," he said.

A Gates spokesperson also issued a statement after the fresh cache of millions of files related to the investigation into Epstein was released.

"The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein's frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame," the spokesperson said.

Someone's name in the Epstein files does not imply any wrongdoing.