PM Modi To Meet 40 CEOs, Including Sam Altman, At India AI Summit

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet 35-40 CEOs, including Open AI's Sam Altman, at the next week's AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, NDTV has learnt.  

Top CEOs - Airtel's Sunil Bharti Mittal, Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekharan, billionaire philanthropist Billl Gates, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, top officials of Microsoft, Netflix, Zoom, Amazon - are expected to discuss their India investment plans, AI strategy and roadmap, employment generation potential, and collaboration with the government on AI adoption, sources have told NDTV.

Last December, Microsoft announced a record $17.5 billion (Rs 1.5 lakh crore) investment in India, its largest-ever commitment in Asia, over the next four years to expand AI infrastructure, deepen cloud capacity and train millions in advanced digital skills. 

The announcement came shortly after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella met with PM Modi in New Delhi to discuss India's growing role in the global AI ecosystem.

India expects around $100 billion investment commitments during the AI Summit, sources said. 

At the invitation of PM Modi, leaders from 20 countries are scheduled to attend. These include major global and regional voices such as Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Emmanuel Macron, Pedro Sanchez, alongside leaders from Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, the UAE, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. 

In addition, ministerial delegations from over 45 countries, the UN Secretary General, and senior officials from several international organisations will participate.

According to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the summit is anchored in three core "Sutras" - People, Planet and Progress, which together define India's cooperative approach to AI. The five-day event will be spread across major venues in the national capital, led by Bharat Mandapam and Sushma Swaraj Bhawan, along with several other locations across the national capital.

Senior officials say the scale of the summit is unprecedented. Over two lakh participants have already registered, cutting across governments, industry, academia and civil society. Notably, the registrations also include a large number of farmers and grassroots participants, reflecting India's intent to connect AI discourse with real-world developmental needs.

The summit will also directly address global anxieties around automation and job losses, with dedicated discussions on skilling, reskilling and workforce transitions.

Earlier editions of the AI Impact Summit were held in Paris, Seoul and British wartime code-breaking hub Bletchley.

(NDTV is also hosting an AI summit on February 18)