Billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani on Monday called on India to build sovereign capabilities across the artificial intelligence value chain, asserting that energy security and digital infrastructure would define geopolitical power in the coming decades.
Addressing the Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) Annual Business Summit 2026, the Adani Group chairman said the foundations of globalisation were being reshaped amid growing geopolitical tensions and technological competition.
“The world that is emerging is not flat. It is fractured and contested,” Adani said, adding that semiconductors had become instruments of statecraft, while data and cloud infrastructure were increasingly being treated as strategic national assets.
Highlighting the importance of technological sovereignty, Adani said countries that control energy and computing power would dominate the future global order.
“The country that controls its energy will power its industrial future. The country that controls its compute will power its intelligence future. And the country that controls both will shape the century ahead,” he said.
Calling artificial intelligence a strategic infrastructure challenge rather than merely a software revolution, Adani said India must develop and own its AI ecosystem domestically.
“India must not rent the infrastructure of its intelligence future. India must build it, power it and own it on its own soil,” he said.
Adani said India’s growing domestic demand in sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, mobility and digital services gives it a unique advantage in building large-scale AI and energy infrastructure.
He noted that India had already crossed 500 gigawatts of installed power capacity and projected that the country’s AI-driven data centre capacity could rise from 5 GW by 2030 to nearly 75 GW by 2047.
The Adani Group chairman stressed that AI infrastructure includes energy, cooling systems, chips, networks, data and talent, and warned that India must prepare immediately for a sharp rise in computing demand.
Rejecting concerns that artificial intelligence would primarily eliminate jobs, Adani argued that India should harness AI to boost productivity, empower entrepreneurs and create new employment opportunities.
“The real measure of AI will not be how many jobs it replaces. The real measure will be how many Indians it empowers,” he said.
Adani also reiterated the group’s previously announced USD 100 billion investment commitment towards energy transition and digital infrastructure, including the 30-GW renewable energy project at Khavda in Gujarat, which he described as the world’s largest single-site renewable energy plant.
He further announced continued expansion of the group’s data infrastructure business through partnerships with companies such as Google, Microsoft, Flipkart and Uber, including plans for a gigawatt-scale data centre campus in Visakhapatnam.
Drawing parallels with India’s digital payments revolution through UPI, Adani said artificial intelligence could unlock even greater economic transformation if supported by sovereign infrastructure and innovation.
“The future does not arrive. It is built,” he said.
