‘AI economy needs IP push’

India must shift from being a technology services-led nation to an intellectual property (IP)-driven economy to remain competitive in the fast-evolving artificial intelligence landscape, HCL Technologies chairperson Roshni Nadar Malhotra said on Thursday.

Speaking at the AI Impact Summit 2026, she asserted that services scale with effort, but IP scales infinitely, making ownership of platforms, models and products crucial in the AI era. According to her, the future will belong to nations and companies that build and own technology rather than merely deploy it.

She stressed that in the AI economy, value accrues to creators of platforms and products, calling this shift transformative rather than merely economic. AI, she said, carries a dual impact — reducing costs through automation while simultaneously opening new markets and opportunities.

For India to lead globally, she outlined three strategic priorities: moving from scale to IP creation, shifting from adopting technologies to building them, and creating a national AI infrastructure that democratises access to compute power and innovation. Accessible compute resources, she noted, can decentralise innovation across startups, universities and enterprises, multiplying IP creation.

Nadar described AI as not just a technological change but a leadership moment, forcing a rethink of what remains uniquely human as machines increasingly write, calculate, diagnose and predict.