THEBUSINESSBYTES BUREAU
NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 19, 2026
Framing Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the defining force of
geopolitical power in the 21st century, Jeet Adani on Thursday called for India
to build sovereign energy, compute and services capabilities to avoid
“importing intelligence” in the global AI race.
Addressing the AI Impact Summit in the national capital, the Adani Group Director
said AI would reshape sovereignty much like electricity powered industry, oil
redrew geopolitics and the internet transformed commerce. “The central question
before India is not whether we will adopt AI, but whether we will architect
it,” he said, urging the country to build domestic infrastructure rather than
depend on external systems.
Jeet Adani outlined a three-pillar framework — energy sovereignty,
compute and cloud sovereignty, and services sovereignty — describing them as
“the foundations of modern nationalism” in the AI era.
Calling power the “fuel of intelligence,” he warned that fragile grids
would translate into fragile AI systems. “If a nation’s energy systems are
fragile, its intelligence systems are fragile,” he said, adding that renewable
expansion must now be viewed as strategic digital infrastructure.
He projected a future where renewable energy clusters are co-located with
AI data centres, industrial corridors integrate energy and compute planning,
and storage and grid stability become national priorities. Sustainable energy,
he said, would evolve from climate policy into a competitive advantage in the
AI economy.
On the second pillar, Jeet Adani argued that sovereign compute would play
the role that steel plants, shipyards and semiconductor fabs played in earlier
eras. “Where compute resides, under whose jurisdiction it operates, and who
controls access — these are strategic questions,” he noted.
Cloud sovereignty, he clarified, does not imply isolation but autonomy—hosting
critical AI workloads domestically and ensuring high-performance compute access
for startups, academia, defence, healthcare and manufacturing. “In earlier
centuries, nations built navies to secure trade routes; today we build
sovereign compute to secure intelligence routes,” he said.
The third pillar focused on ensuring AI productivity gains accrue within
India. He said AI must first enhance agricultural resilience, personalise
education at scale, optimise logistics and ports, expand rural healthcare
diagnostics, modernise manufacturing and deepen financial inclusion. “AI must
become a force multiplier for Indian citizens before it becomes a margin
multiplier for others,” he asserted.
Linking policy vision with corporate strategy, Jeet Adani referenced
Gautam Adani’s recent announcement of a $100 billion investment to build a
sovereign, green-energy-powered AI infrastructure platform. The plan includes a
proposed 5-gigawatt integrated energy-and-compute ecosystem aimed at anchoring
India’s AI growth with domestically controlled, renewable-powered hyperscale
data capacity.
“This signals a shift from
importing intelligence to architecting it — from consuming AI to creating it,”
he said, adding that integrating renewables, grid resilience and hyperscale
compute would secure India’s AI future “at national scale.”
Positioning AI infrastructure as a national mission, Jeet Adani said the current generation’s responsibility is to “strengthen, secure and defend” India’s freedom through capability and execution. “This is modern nationalism at its highest form — resilience over vulnerability and execution over entitlement,” he said.
Concluding on a geopolitical note, he argued that India’s rise in AI would be defined not by dominance but by stabilising global systems with inclusive, values-driven technology. “The question is no longer whether India will participate in the AI century, but whether the AI century will carry India’s imprint,” he said.
