New Delhi, 11 May (H.S.): India’s leading industrialist and Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani has said that in the coming decades, energy security and digital infrastructure will define geopolitical power. Speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Annual Business Summit 2026 here on Monday, he urged India to build its own sovereign capabilities across the artificial intelligence (AI) value chain.

Adani compared the coming wave of AI to the explosion in mobile‑data consumption a decade ago. “A few people imagined the scale of India’s mobile‑data boom, but once smartphones became affordable, networks expanded and data prices fell, consumption surged,” he said.

He predicted that AI will trigger a similar revolution, but with a critical difference: it will be far more energy‑intensive.

“Just as mobile data use exploded, AI will also drive exponential growth, but this growth will consume far more energy,” Adani noted. He cited projections that data‑centre capacity, expected to reach about 5 gigawatts by 2030, could rise to nearly 75 gigawatts by 2047—making early‑stage energy planning essential for India.

Adani highlighted that India has already made exceptional progress in the energy sector, with installed power capacity crossing 500 gigawatts by March 2026. Over the past 10 years, capacity has grown by about 53%, and the country is now on a path to quadruple its capacity to 2,000 gigawatts by 2047.

He added that India took 67 years to reach a $2 trillion economy, but has added the next two tranches of $2 trillion in just 12 years, underscoring the acceleration of growth. Every new road, port, airport, factory, energy asset and data centre, he said, is pushing India into a new tier of development.

“At this pace,” Adani said, “India will add growth equivalent to an entire European‑sized economy in GDP every decade.”

Emphasising that the future will not arrive on its own, he said the next phase of India’s freedom will be fought in its grids, data centres, factories, classrooms, labs and minds.

“In the age of AI, freedom will mean the ability to power oneself, to compute for oneself, and to dream for oneself,” Adani remarked.

He urged India to treat AI not merely as software, but as strategic infrastructure—encompassing energy, data centres, chips, networks, compute and talent—and to build, power and own this infrastructure domestically rather than renting the foundations of its “intelligence future.”

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar