The Consulate General of India in New York, ReNew and the US-India Strategic and Partnership Forum hosted a roundtable on AI infrastructure and energy investment on 22 September 2026, during UN General Assembly week, The Economic Times reported. The discussion brought government, industry and investors together around the power supply and digital capacity needed for AI.
Key points
- The Indian consulate said more than 40 people from government, business, academia, investment and civil society took part.
- Discussion covered data-centre investment, reliable electricity, grid readiness and financing for cross-border energy and digital infrastructure.
- A report on India’s potential energy export opportunity in the AI era was launched at the roundtable.
- At separate UN meetings, Jaishankar urged broader participation in decisions affecting Global South countries, while Guterres welcomed a call for international oversight of frontier AI.
More than 40 join New York roundtable
The meeting was titled “US India Partnership: Powering the AI Economy”. According to an X post by the consulate reported by The Economic Times, more than 40 people attended, representing government, investors, industry, academia and civil society. Its stated subjects were cooperation on AI, energy and digital infrastructure between India and the US.
Santosh Kumar Sarangi, secretary at India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, attended alongside Mukesh Aghi, president and chief executive of the US-India Strategic and Partnership Forum. The participants also included World Bank executive director Neelkanth Mishra, ReNew chairman and chief executive Sumant Sinha, and ReNew co-founder Vaishali Nigam Sinha.
The mix of officials, investors and company leaders reflected the subjects put before the meeting. Participants discussed investment in data centres and AI infrastructure across the US-India corridor, as well as the electricity supply and grid capacity that growing AI demand would require. They also considered public, private and blended finance for energy and digital projects crossing the two countries’ borders.
Policy and regulation formed another part of the agenda. The discussion included ways to bring policy, regulatory and technology frameworks into closer alignment to support bilateral cooperation. Those questions sit alongside investment decisions: data-centre capacity depends on power and grids, while cross-border projects involve institutions with different responsibilities for financing and approvals.
ReNew meeting links power and data centres
The roundtable also marked the launch of a report titled Powering the AI Age: India’s Next Energy Export Opportunity. Its title places energy supply alongside the investment in computing facilities discussed at the meeting. ReNew co-hosted the discussion with the Indian consulate and the US-India Strategic and Partnership Forum.
Grid readiness was treated as a condition for meeting AI-related demand, alongside reliable and resilient power supply. The financing discussion extended beyond individual data centres to cross-border energy and digital infrastructure. That made the meeting as much about who would fund and support the surrounding systems as about investment in computing facilities themselves.
India’s domestic capacity also forms part of its wider AI infrastructure discussions. AI Affairs previously reported Microsoft’s launch of a Hyderabad cloud region as an AI hub for Asia and the Global South. At the New York roundtable, participants addressed investment across the bilateral corridor and the power systems needed to serve AI demand.
Jaishankar and Guterres address AI at UN
At a separate meeting of Global South countries during the 81st UN General Assembly, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar called for cooperation amid pressure on supply chains and trade, fragmented investment flows, debt vulnerabilities and inadequate development finance. He also urged governments to manage changes brought by AI so they did not deepen divisions, and sought broader participation in decisions affecting Global South countries.
India pursued another discussion on AI during the same UN gathering. It held trilateral talks with France and the United Arab Emirates covering AI, space, health sciences, energy and culture, Firstpost reported. Jaishankar said the three countries had identified areas where their respective capabilities could support cooperation.
India has argued for wider international cooperation on AI governance and for developing countries to have meaningful access to the technology and the infrastructure needed to use it, Firstpost reported. That position links the questions raised at the consulate’s investment meeting to India’s discussions with other governments: access to AI requires facilities and power as well as a place in decisions about its governance.
A separate initiative at the UN concerned oversight of frontier models. Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the “Call for Control of Frontier AI Models”, led by Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. In a post reported by The Economic Times, he said the call asked UN member states to build on existing mechanisms and explore an international institution that could set standards, enable verification and convene governments when capability thresholds were crossed.
On 16 September, ahead of the General Assembly session, Guterres identified runaway AI, climate change and deepening inequality as three existential threats. He described potential uses for AI in health, education and climate work, while warning that its development was moving faster than people’s understanding of the risks.
