Microsoft founder Invoice Gates has cancelled his keynote speech at India’s flagship AI summit simply hours earlier than he was attributable to take the stage on Thursday.
Gates, who has confronted renewed scrutiny over his previous ties to the late intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein, withdrew to “guarantee the main target stays on the AI Summit’s key priorities”, the Gates Basis mentioned in a press release.
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The five-day India AI Influence Summit 2026 was meant to showcase India’s ambitions within the booming sector, with the nation anticipating to draw greater than $200bn in funding over the following two years.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had billed the summit as a possibility for India to form the way forward for AI, drawing high-profile attendees, together with French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
As a substitute, it has been dogged by controversy, from Gates’s abrupt exit to an incident by which an Indian college tried to move off a Chinese language-made robotic canine as its personal innovation.
So, what precisely went mistaken at India’s flagship AI gathering and why has it drawn such intense scrutiny?
Why Gates’s look grew to become a problem
Invoice Gates was attributable to ship a brief however high-profile speech highlighting the alternatives and dangers posed by synthetic intelligence.
Nonetheless, in latest weeks, a number of opposition figures and commentators in Indian media weighed in after emails that includes his title had been launched within the Epstein recordsdata in late January, questioning whether or not his presence was acceptable.
Regardless of the dialogue, all seemed to be continuing as deliberate earlier within the week. On Tuesday, the Gates Basis’s India workplace posted on X that Gates would attend the summit and “ship his keynote as scheduled”.
Then, on Thursday, hours earlier than the scheduled speech, it launched a press release saying that “After cautious consideration, and to make sure the main target stays on the AI Summit’s key priorities, Mr Gates won’t be delivering his keynote deal with.”
It added that Ankur Vora, president of the Gates Basis’s Africa and India places of work, would ship the speech as a substitute.
What are the alleged hyperlinks between Epstein and Gates?
Invoice Gates was named in paperwork associated to Epstein launched in January by the US Division of Justice.
In a draft electronic mail included among the many paperwork, Epstein alleged Gates had engaged in extramarital affairs and sought his assist in procuring medicine “to take care of penalties of intercourse with Russian women”.
It was unclear whether or not Epstein truly despatched the e-mail, and Gates denies any wrongdoing.
The Gates Basis, in a press release to The New York Instances, known as the allegations “completely absurd and utterly false”.
What has India’s authorities mentioned?
Little or no.
Regardless of criticism and calls from opposition figures to elucidate the invitation to Gates, the Indian authorities has indirectly addressed the controversy that culminated in Gates’s withdrawal.
Whereas unnamed authorities sources informed native media he wouldn’t attend the summit, officers stopped wanting explaining why.
Requested about Gates’s participation, Info Know-how Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw declined to provide a transparent reply to reporters, whereas Modi made no reference to the difficulty in his public remarks.
Why are the Epstein recordsdata a delicate topic for India?
The controversy surrounding Gates’s deliberate participation comes shut on the heels of a sequence of disclosures within the Epstein recordsdata which have pressured the Modi authorities on the backfoot.
In a single electronic mail to an unidentified particular person he referred to solely as “Jabor Y”, Epstein referred to Modi’s historic go to – the primary by an Indian prime minister – to Israel in July 2017.
Epstein wrote: “The Indian Prime minister modi took recommendation. and danced and sang in israel for the advantage of the US president. that they had met just a few weeks in the past.. IT WORKED. !”
Modi’s go to to Israel – and his subsequent embrace of the Benjamin Netanyahu authorities, with navy, intelligence and different ties strengthened over the previous decade – had already drawn criticism from the opposition Congress occasion and others, who’ve accused him of reversing a long time of Indian help for the Palestinian trigger. India was the primary non-Arab nation to recognise the Palestine Liberation Group in 1974, and didn’t set up full diplomatic relations with Israel till 1992.
However the Epstein electronic mail turbocharged the opposition criticism of Modi’s Israel coverage – with questions now additionally requested about whether or not it was influenced by Washington.
The Indian Ministry of Exterior Affairs dismissed the Epstein electronic mail in an unusually sharply worded assertion.
“Past the very fact of the prime minister’s official go to to Israel in July 2017, the remainder of the allusions within the electronic mail are little greater than trashy ruminations by a convicted felony, which should be dismissed with the utmost contempt,” spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal mentioned.
However the Epstein cloud continues to hover over India.
The recordsdata additionally present that India’s present oil minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, exchanged dozens of emails with Epstein after he joined Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Celebration in 2014.
In lots of them, Puti seems to be taking Epstein’s assist in getting US traders, akin to LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, to go to India. In others, he seems to recommend that he had a reasonably comfy private relationship with Epstein.
“Please let me know when you’re again out of your unique island,” Puri wrote in December 2014, as an example, asking to arrange a gathering by which Puri might give Epstein some books to “excite an curiosity in India”.
Puri, in a brand new convention, has claimed that he solely met Epstein “three or 4 instances”, however the Congress occasion has argued that the emails recommend a a lot nearer relationship.
Gates’s work in India
The Gates Basis has lengthy been a key associate in India’s public well being and growth sectors, backing main vaccination drives, illness prevention campaigns and sanitation programmes.
On the similar time, he has had vocal critics, together with environmental activist Vandana Shiva, who has argued that Gates’s model of “philanthro-imperialism” makes use of wealth to manage international meals programs.
Gates additionally confronted heavy criticism after a 2024 podcast by which he mentioned India was “a type of laboratory to strive issues … that then, whenever you show them out in India, you’ll be able to take to different locations” when discussing growth programmes and the muse’s work there.
‘Orion’ the robodog and different controversies
Past the fallout over Invoice Gates’s cancelled keynote, the AI Influence Summit has confronted a number of controversies.
One incident concerned a robotic canine named “Orion”, which Galgotias College, primarily based within the New Delhi suburban city of Higher Noida, introduced as its personal innovation.
On-line customers rapidly recognized the machine as a commercially accessible Chinese language-made mannequin, prompting organisers to ask the establishment to vacate its stall.
The occasion additionally drew criticism on its opening day after dealing with logistical points, together with lengthy queues and confusion over entry procedures, based on native media.
On Wednesday, giant crowds had been seen strolling for miles after police cordoned off roads for VIP entry.
Dhananjay Yadav, the CEO of an organization exhibiting high-tech wearables, made headlines after he reported on social media that units had been stolen from the corporate’s stand.
The Instances of India later reported that two upkeep staff on the occasion had been arrested for allegedly stealing the wearables.
