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French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said artificial intelligence, GPUs, and chips have become matters of geopolitics and macroeconomics, praising India’s sovereign approach to AI development at the India AI Impact Summit 2026.
“AI, GPU, chips are now directly translated in geopolitical and macroeconomic terms. Some time for the best, some time for the worst, I have to say,” Macron said, addressing the summit in Delhi.
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He highlighted India’s deliberate policy choices in artificial intelligence. “India made a deliberate sovereign choice, SML, small language models. Task-specific, designed to run on a smartphone, India built the first government-funded AI and deployed 38,000 GPUs at the cheapest rates to every startup in the country, as you perfectly describe, Mr Minister,” he said.
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Macron recalled that France and India had earlier co-hosted the AI Action Summit in Paris. “Last year, when France and India co-hosted the AI Action Summit in Paris, we set a global guiding principle for technologies that would transform our societies and our economies,” he said.
“We say that artificial intelligence will be an enabler for our humanity to innovate faster, to disrupt healthcare, energy, mobility, agriculture, and public services for the good of mankind. Both of us, we do believe in this revolution. AI has become a major field of strategic competition, and big tech got even bigger,” he added.
Referring to India’s digital public infrastructure, Macron said, “India built something that no other country in the world has built. A digital identity for 1.4 billion people. A payment system that now processes 20 billion transactions every month. A health infrastructure that has issued 500 million digital health IDs. Here are the results. They call it the India Stack Open Interoperable Sovereign. That is what this summit is about.”
He said the world was witnessing the beginning of a rapid transformation. “We are clearly at the beginning of a huge acceleration, and you perfectly described it during your interventions,” he noted.
Drawing a contrast with the past, Macron said, “10 years ago, a street vendor in Mumbai could not open a bank account. No address, no papers, no access, and today the same vendor accepts payments on his phone.”
‘AI together’: Macron calls for India-France partnership
Returning to his earlier example, Macron said India had defied global scepticism over digital inclusion.
“I started with a story about a street vendor in Mumbai. Ten years ago, the world told India that 1.4 billion people could not be brought into the digital economy. India proved them wrong. Today, some say AI is a game only the biggest can play… India, France, Europe, together with our partners, those who believe in our approach, companies, governments, investors, might have a different way,” he said.
“The future of AI will be built by those who combine innovation and responsibility, technology with humanity, and India and France will help to shape this future together,” Macron added.
He said the purpose of the summit went beyond scaling up technology.
“Now, the point of this summit was not only to say, let’s do more, it was to say, let’s do better together. AI may be a powerful accelerator of productivity and a major shift for labour markets. This is why access to AI for all is critical,” he said.
“France and India share a common vision. A sovereign AI used to protect our planet and to foster prosperity for all… Last year in Paris, we called it action. This year in Delhi, we call it impact. But the real name is simpler, AI together. AI and digitalisation will be a key theme for the months to come,” he added.
Opening his address, Macron said, “Namaste. Thank you very much for welcoming us to this magnificent city, in this magnificent country. It’s great to be back after my 2024 state visit for this Artificial Intelligence Impact Summit hosted by you, Prime Minister.”
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 has drawn world leaders, ministers, industry executives and researchers to Delhi, all gathered to debate how artificial intelligence and digital systems will shape economies, jobs and everyday life in the years ahead.
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