Meet with 16 top CEOs, 7 more bilateral meetings: PM Modi's busy day amid AI Summit

On Friday morning, PM Modi chaired a roundtable with 16 CEOs from leading AI and deeptech startups.

Updated on: Feb 20, 2026, 16:57:05 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi began Friday with an intensive round of engagements, including a high-level interaction with AI startup founders and seven back-to-back bilateral meetings with global leaders and top technology executives.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a meeting with CEOs of AI and Deeptech startups, in New Delhi, on Friday. (narendramodi.in)

In the morning, PM Modi chaired a roundtable with 16 CEOs from leading AI and deeptech startups. Track latest updates from AI Summit here

The discussions focused on India's innovation ecosystem, access to capital, research and development support, skilling, and pathways to scale globally from India.

The Prime Minister is understood to have encouraged entrepreneurs to build responsible, inclusive AI solutions that address real-world challenges in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, education and governance.

The interaction followed Thursday's address at the summit and participation in the Leaders' Plenary, where Modi outlined India’s vision for democratised and human-centric AI.

Seven back-to-back bilateral meetings

After the startup roundtable, the Prime Minister held seven consecutive bilateral meetings.

Among these were discussions with leaders of Liechtenstein, the Slovak Republic, Sri Lanka and Mauritius. The talks covered cooperation in digital public infrastructure, emerging technologies, trade, capacity building and development partnerships.

In his meeting with Sri Lanka and Mauritius, the focus was on strengthening regional cooperation, digital connectivity and development collaboration. Discussions with Liechtenstein and the Slovak Republic explored expanding engagement in high-tech sectors, innovation partnerships and investment opportunities.

The Prime Minister also met the Secretary-General of the United Nations, with conversations centred on global AI governance frameworks, ethical standards and multilateral cooperation to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits developing nations and does not widen the digital divide.

Engagement with global tech leaders

In addition to meetings with political leaders, Modi held separate talks with the leadership of OpenAI and Qualcomm. The discussions are understood to have focused on AI research collaboration, semiconductor ecosystems, skilling initiatives and expanding investments in India’s technology sector.

These meetings come as India positions itself as a key global hub for AI development, backed by its digital public infrastructure and growing startup ecosystem.

The AI Impact Summit has brought together heads of state, ministers, startup founders, researchers and CEOs from across the world, underlining India’s ambition to play a leading role in shaping the future of artificial intelligence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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