Bill Gates to skip India AI Impact Summit keynote, Gates Foundation confirms

After days of speculation, Gates Foundation India has confirmed that Bill Gates will not deliver his keynote address at the ongoing India AI Impact Summit 2026. The foundation shared a post on microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter) announcing that the Microsoft founder will skip his keynote speech that he was previously scheduled to deliver today, February 19, 2026. There had been uncertainty around Gates’ participation after earlier reports suggested he might not attend the event. The Gates Foundation had subsequently indicated that he would be present, but his name later disappeared from the official AI Impact Summit website, adding to the confusion. The foundation then stated that Gates will be delivering his keynote as scheduled, as stated by an ANI report earlier this week. Notably, Bill Gates arrived in Amravti in Andhra Pradesh on February 16 and visited an agricultural field in Undavall along with Chief Minister Chandrababu.

With the latest X post, Gates Foundation India has cleared the air. It stated that the foundation will now be “represented by Ankur Vora, President of Africa and India Offices, who will speak later today at the Summit”.

Here’s what Gates Foundation India wrote

“After careful consideration, and to ensure the focus remains on the AI Summit's key priorities, Mr. Gates will not be delivering his keynote address. The Gates Foundation will be represented by Ankur Vora, President of Africa and India Offices, who will speak later today at the Summit.
The Gates Foundation remains fully committed to our work in India to advance our shared health and development goals,” the post reads.

India AI Impact Summit 2026: Tech speakers on day 4

As per the official website of India AI Impact Summit, tech CEOs scheduled to speak today are Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, N Chandrasekaran – Chairman, Tata Sons, Rishad Premji, Executive Chairman, Wipro, Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President, Microsoft, and Julie Sweet, CEO, Accenture.

Alexandr Wang, Chief AI Officer, Meta, Arthur Mensch, CEO and Co-founder, Mistral AI, Roy Jakobs, CEO Phillips, Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks among others are also scheduled to deliver their keynote at the summit today.