Highlights:
- Bipul Sinha calls AI the 'most transformational technology in our lifetime'
- Says US tech expertise and India’s scale create a powerful partnership
- Stresses AI’s potential in healthcare, education, and job retraining
- Warns AI brings '100 times more opportunities' and '100 times more risk'
- Emphasizes trust, governance, and guardrails in agentic AI deployment
A strong partnership between the United States and India in artificial intelligence presents a major opportunity to deliver progress across sectors such as healthcare, education, job training, and digital literacy, according to Bipul Sinha, Chairman and CEO of security and AI operations company Rubrik.
Sinha shared his views in an exclusive interview ahead of the India AI Impact Summit, being held in New Delhi from February 16-20. The event will bring together global leaders, policymakers, and innovators to discuss the future of AI.
"I have been a huge proponent of the India-US relationship because the US has the technological know-how, technology IP, and technology scale. India has a human scale. India has a 1.4 billion population and a youth population, tremendous growth rate of a large economy," Sinha said.
An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and The Wharton School, Sinha co-founded Palo Alto-headquartered Rubrik in 2014. He emphasized that as investment and innovation drive India’s growth, closer AI collaboration between the two countries could unlock massive benefits.
“So America and India coming together, particularly around AI, the opportunity is tremendous to deliver healthcare, deliver education, deliver job training, digital literacy, AI literacy, and AI-enablement of the population,” he said.
He added that “technology is the answer” if nations aim to move hundreds of millions of people into the middle class.
"And AI could be a very, very strong partnership between America and India that helps American businesses deliver the right technology to Indian organisations and for India to really uplift the population into a very large and thriving middle class,” he said.
Calling Artificial Intelligence the “most transformational technology in our lifetime,” Sinha noted it will have “significant implications" for individuals, societies, businesses, and nation-states.
For individuals, he said, AI will require job retraining and adaptation to new work patterns. For businesses, it represents both an immense opportunity and a serious risk.
“Because AI promises 100 times more opportunities and also 100 times more risk, because now somebody can control your whole business operations remotely and do tremendous damage.”
At the national level, he described AI as part of a “new industrial age,” where global positioning will matter significantly. “India being the technology hub, India being the largest at-scale technology talent, AI is particularly important for Indian businesses to serve the world,” Sinha said.
In a country of 1.4 billion people, he pointed to the scale of opportunity: "think about healthcare, education, and so many services that you can provide using AI at scale. The opportunity is tremendous.”
Sinha said his focus at the summit will be on responsible AI deployment. “How do you adopt agentic work at scale and not undertake a huge risk,” he said, referencing Rubrik’s motto, “unleash agents, not risk.”
He outlined critical questions: “what are the risks of agents? How do you deploy agents at scale? How do you monitor and govern agents? How do you ensure that there is trust in the AI system? From monitoring of agentic work to governance and creating guardrails of agentic work, and if they misbehave, how do you undo and take out the bad effects of compromised agents?”
Describing AI as the “new industrial age,” Sinha noted that the “new factory of intelligence” requires GPUs, data centers, and large-scale investment. He praised India’s progress, citing significant public and private commitments and infrastructure expansion.
“I'm very, very hopeful about how both private, public, the whole market segments are focused on AI in India,” he said, adding he is “very excited" to participate in the summit centered on the principles of People, Planet, and Progress.
