Experts brainstorm the evolving impact of AI on innovation, jobs, and global competitiveness, among other issues.
By AB Wire
Dubai’s Museum of the Future, the city’s latest architectural marvel dedicated to exploring science, technology, and innovation, became a hub for dialogue and action in the global AI revolution on Wednesday, Feb. 26, as it hosted the Indiaspora AI Summit 2025.
The daylong summit, held in partnership with the Dubai Future Foundation, marked the conclusion of Indiaspora’s first-ever Forum for Good. It brought together global AI experts from Silicon Valley, the United Arab Emirates, India, and beyond to discuss how nations can navigate the fast-evolving AI landscape amid groundbreaking investments in infrastructure.
One of the summit’s highlights was a fireside chat featuring Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner of the Menlo Park, California-based Mayfield Fund, which invests in early and growth-stage companies.
In the inaugural session, Chaddha spoke with Indiaspora Founder and Chairman MR Rangaswami on “The Era of Collaborative Intelligence.” Stressing that people, not markets, drive lasting innovation, he said, “We are a firm which invests in people, not in markets. Because at the stage we invest, our belief is people build products, people build companies, waves can come and go. If you bet on A-plus people who are aligned with your values, their initial idea may not pan out, but eventually they [will]. So we are making bets on the jockeys, not the horse, and when we talk about AI, it’s a horse. At the end, humans will win.”
READ: Inaugural Indiaspora Forum For Good 2025 opens to drive positive international change (February 25, 2025)
When asked by Rangaswami why he was so optimistic about AI, Chaddha described it as a tool that will enhance, rather than replace, human capabilities. “I don’t look at it as it’s going to take over jobs, I look at it… as collaborative intelligence, machines and humans will work together to elevate humans to super humans, they will help, yes, already in factories and everything, automation has happened, efficiency has happened, but now, using AI and machines, they will be able to do jobs, we don’t want to do, we can’t do.”
Reflecting on his long career in Silicon Valley, Chaddha — who holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University and a B.Tech in electrical engineering from IIT Delhi and has made 12 appearances on the Forbes Midas List of Top 100 Tech Investors — noted that he had never witnessed anything on the scale of the current AI revolution.
“I’ve been fortunate to have worked with over 60 entrepreneurs in my venture career, of whom 18 have gone on and built IPO companies, and another 27 have been acquired,” he said. “I’ve seen the growth cycle of the internet in the 90s as an entrepreneur, the dot-com crash, lull period, then you go through the hype cycle again of social, then market crashes, then iPhone happens, then that crashes, then you have clean tech, you know what happened to that, then we have cloud, then we have blockchain, and now we have AI, so I’ve just seen too many cycles, and when we go through AI, I have personally never seen anything like this, and having worked with people like Bill Gates and other things in the ’90s and early in Microsoft, the scale here is nothing compared to what we have seen, and the possibilities are just endless when we go through it.”
Other prominent speakers included Deputy CEO of Dubai Future Foundation Abdulaziz AlJaziri and industry titans such as Anurag Banerjee, founder and CEO of Quilt.AI; Radha Ramaswami Basu, founder and CEO of iMerit; Anurag Jain, co-founder and managing partner at Perot Jain; and Sindhu Gangadharan, managing director of SAP Labs India.
READ: Next frontier of AI: Explainability, ethics, and the future of intelligent systems (February 4, 2025)
They delved into strategies for nations to maintain their AI competitiveness through strategic partnerships, investments, and policy innovations.
The day’s agenda also included an AI Startup Showcase, chaired by P.K. Gulati, the chairman emeritus of TiE Global and founder of the Smart Start Fund, which operates in Dubai and San Francisco. It featured three founders, Alok Kumar of CozmoX AI, Prem Naraindas of Katonic and Anuscha Iqbal of Qanooni.
Another fireside chat brought together Hamad Al Shirawi, Director of the Dubai Center for Artificial Intelligence, and Satish Sivan, Consul General of India to Dubai. The discussion was moderated by Sanjeev Joshipura, Executive Director of Indiaspora.
The AI Summit was preceded by the three-day Indiaspora Forum for Good, held in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE. The event brought together approximately 500 members of the Indian diaspora from 30 countries.
In the backdrop of the summit were several key developments in AI. They included the emergence of DeepSeek, a new leader in open-source AI models, signaling a shift in innovation paradigms; the U.S. commitment of an immediate $100 billion to AI infrastructure—supported by UAE-based tech investor MGX; America’s historic $500 billion commitment to AI infrastructure, called the Stargate Project; and India’s ambitious plans to develop the world’s largest 3GW data center through Reliance.
While welcoming the delegates, Rangaswami reflected on the tectonic shifts in the AI world over the past four to five months. ‘When we held the last [Indiaspora] summit, DeepSeek didn’t exist,’ he said. “Who knows what will happen in the next six months? This market is rapidly shifting, rapidly changing.”