French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday lauded India’s digital transformation and its pioneering role in technology governance, describing it as a global benchmark, during his keynote address at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi.
Opening his speech with a warm “Namaste,” Macron thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for hosting the summit and said he was pleased to return to India after his 2024 state visit. He framed his address around a compelling story to illustrate India’s progress in digital inclusion.
“Ten years ago, a street vendor in Mumbai could not open a bank account – no address, no papers, no access. Today, the same vendor accepts payments instantly on his phone from anyone in the country,” Macron said. “That is not just a tech story; it is a civilisation story.”
Highlighting the scale of India’s digital public infrastructure, the French President said India has achieved what no other country has. “India built something that no other country in the world has built – a digital identity for 1.4 billion people, a payment system processing 20 billion transactions every month, and a health infrastructure that has issued 500 million digital health IDs,” he said, referring to the India Stack framework.
Macron noted that such achievements demonstrate how technology can drive financial inclusion and empower citizens at scale. He added that the summit marks the beginning of a period of rapid technological acceleration, particularly in artificial intelligence.
Reflecting on global developments in AI, Macron observed that the technology has increasingly become a field of strategic competition. “AI, GPUs and chips are now directly linked to geopolitical and macroeconomic realities,” he said, acknowledging both the opportunities and risks associated with this transformation.
Recalling the AI Action Summit co-hosted by India and France in Paris last year, Macron said both nations had articulated a shared vision of AI as a force for good. “Artificial Intelligence must enable humanity to innovate faster and transform healthcare, energy, mobility, agriculture and public services for the benefit of mankind,” he said. “Both of us believe in this revolution.”
He praised India’s sovereign approach to AI development, including its focus on small, task-specific language models designed to run on smartphones and the deployment of 38,000 government-funded GPUs at affordable rates to support startups. Such measures, he said, reflect a deliberate strategy to foster innovation while maintaining strategic autonomy.
Returning to the story of the Mumbai street vendor, Macron said India had already disproved skeptics who once claimed that 1.4 billion people could not be brought into the digital economy. “Today, some say AI is a game only the biggest can play,” he said. “India, France, Europe and our partners may have a different way.”
“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,” said Macron.
(With agency inputs)
