Updated 19 February 2026 at 11:11 IST
From Mumbai’s Streets to Global AI: Macron Hails India’s Digital Leap at AI Impact Summit 2026
Macron hailed India’s digital journey, from street vendors using UPI to building sovereign AI models, at the India AI Impact Summit 2026. He urged India, France, and Europe to lead in creating responsible AI that combines innovation with humanity.
New Delhi: French President Emmanuel Macron opened his keynote at the India AI Impact Summit with a warm “Namaste,” before delivering a sweeping speech that praised India’s digital journey and outlined a vision for responsible artificial intelligence.
Macron began with a story of a Mumbai street vendor who, ten years ago, could not open a bank account. “No address, no papers, no access. Today, the same vendor accepts payments on his phone,” he said. He hailed India’s achievement in creating a digital identity for 1.4 billion people, calling it something “no other country has built.”
He highlighted India’s UPI payments system, which now processes 20 billion transactions every month, describing it as a “civilizational story.” He also praised India’s digital health infrastructure, which has issued 500 million digital health IDs, and the broader India Stack - an open, interoperable, sovereign digital framework. “Here are the results. They call it the India Stack Open Interoperable Sovereign. That is what this summit is about. We are clearly at the beginning of a huge,” he said.
On artificial intelligence, Macron said AI has become a matter of strategic competition, with chips and GPUs now tied directly to geopolitics. He contrasted India’s deliberate sovereign choice of small language models (SMLs) - task-specific and designed to run on smartphones - with Europe’s focus on large models. “India built the first government-funded AI and deployed 38,000 GPUs at the cheapest rates to every startup in the country,” he said.
Macron recalled the AI Action Summit in Paris, co-hosted by France and India last year, where guiding principles for responsible AI were set. “AI will disrupt healthcare, energy, mobility, agriculture, and public services for the good of mankind. The future of AI will be built by those who combine innovation with responsibility, technology with humanity,” he said.
He emphasised that India, France, and Europe must work together, pitching Europe as a space of innovation and safety. He also pointed out that India now has the second-largest developer community in the world, and that AI is creating new jobs, countering fears of job losses.
Macron touched on social concerns, stressing the need to protect children from digital abuse. “Children should not be exposed to things online that are forbidden in the real world,” he said, announcing France’s new social media ban for under-15s and urging India to join the movement.
He also addressed the geopolitics of AI, noting that “AI, GPU, chips are now directly translated in geopolitical and macroeconomic terms - sometimes for the best, sometimes for the worst.” He urged big tech leaders to play a responsible game and insisted that no country should be just a market for foreign models.
The India AI Impact Summit, the first global AI summit hosted in the Global South, reflects India’s vision of “Sarvajana Hitaya, Sarvajana Sukhaya” (welfare for all, happiness for all). It promotes human-centric AI that safeguards rights, ensures equitable benefits, supports sustainability, and drives inclusive growth. The India AI Impact Summit 2026 which was originally scheduled to run from February 16–20 has been extended by one day and will now conclude on Saturday, February 21, 2026.
Published By : Priya Pathak
Published On: 19 February 2026 at 10:54 IST