Sam Altman Praises India's Leadership In AI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Feb. 19, 2026, praised India's leadership in sovereign AI, infrastructure and small language models during a keynote at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. He warned that early superintelligence may emerge within a few years, urged preparation for job disruption, and called for democratisation, societal resilience, iterative deployment and an IAEA-style international coordination body for safeguards.