Ep. 43 (AI Futures) - Passing the AI Summit Baton: From France to India | Anne Bouverot, French AI Envoy

*As France passes the Global AI Summit baton to India, what can we expect from the upcoming India AI Impact Summit 2026?*

In the first episode of our podcast series *AI Futures: The Road to the India AI Impact Summit 2026* , we speak with Anne Bouverot, Special AI Envoy of the French President Emmanuel Macron. Bouverot organized the previous global AI summit - The AI Action Summit - in Paris in 2025. The AI Futures Podcast series, hosted by Anirudh Suri, is organized in collaboration with the *Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India* in the run up to the India AI Impact Summit 2026 being held from Feb 16 - 20, 2026 in New Delhi, India.

Bouverot and Suri unpack how the global AI race is shifting beyond a US–China race, and why countries like India and France want to be actors, not just customers, in the AI economy.

They deep dive into questions like:

- Why is “Impact” the core focus of the upcoming AI summit being hosted by India?

- Can AI leadership be multi-polar, or will it remain a US - China race?

- What are the energy and climate cost implications of large-scale AI?

- What are the most exciting use cases of AI that we can expect in 2026?

- Will AI simply reshape work—or quietly hollow out human skills?

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Follow the upcoming India AI Impact Summit 2026: https://impact.indiaai.gov.in/

*About Anne Bouverot*

Anne Bouverot is Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS-PSL), and the French President's special envoy for the AI Action Summit. She has spent most of her career in the technology sector and now advises a number of public and private technology companies and scale ups. With economist Philippe Aghion, in 2024 she co-chaired the Commission that published the report ‘AI: our ambition for France’. She spent the first 20 years of her career at Orange, then became Director General of GSMA, the global mobile operators’ association, and later CEO of digital security and identity solutions company Morpho. She is a graduate of Ecole Normale Supérieure in mathematics and holds a PhD in artificial intelligence.

*About Anirudh Suri, Host of the Podcast*

Anirudh Suri is a non-resident scholar with Carnegie India, where his research and writing focus on technology, artificial intelligence and geopolitics. He is the author of The Great Tech Game: Shaping Geopolitics and the Destinies of Nations, and host of The Great Tech Game Podcast. He is also the Managing Partner at India Internet Fund, a US and India based technology-focused venture capital fund. Previously, Anirudh has worked with the Government of India in New Delhi, McKinsey and Co in New York, Goldman Sachs in London, the Carnegie Endowment in Washington DC, and China Institute of International Studies in Beijing. He completed his MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and his MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School. Named a Goldman Sachs Global Leader, Anirudh has also served on the Board of the Harvard Alumni Association.

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