AI Impact Summit 2026: 4 highlights from Google CEO Sundar Pichai

The AI Impact Summit 2026 is currently underway in New Delhi, India. Some of the biggest tech companies in the world are in attendance to speak about the state of artificial intelligence, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who spoke at the event on Thursday.

Pichai had some interesting things to say in his speech, and you can read a transcript of Pichai's prepared remarks at the Google blog. The prepared remarks differ slightly from the live speech, which was posted to YouTube by Reuters.

1. New connections between the U.S. and India — literally

Google is building a "vast network of subsea fiber optic cables," according to Pichai. 

Google's undersea cable network may not be entirely new, but the company's investments in expansion are. Pichai shared that Google is creating a "full-stack AI hub" as part of the company's $15 billion infrastructure investment in India. This includes four new subsea fiber optic cable systems that are part of Google's America-India Connect Initiative.

2. Like SpaceX, Google is exploring sending data centers into space.

The idea of data centers orbiting the Earth just got a quick mention from Pichai, but it is still notable, as Elon Musk recently said this idea was one of the primary reasons his space exploration company, SpaceX, acquired his AI company, xAI.

While discussing previously unimaginable technological advances in India, where Pichai grew up and went to school, the Google CEO mentioned how he also never imagined he'd "one day be spending time with teams figuring out how to put data centers into space."

As Mashable covered when Musk was floating the idea, we are in very early days for the concept, but it's certainly interesting to hear that Google is having similar discussions.

3. Novel uses for AI in medicine

Pichai also spent some time discussing the use of AI for medical purposes and new drug discovery. For example, Pichai highlighted Google DeepMind's AlphaFold, an AI system that predicts a protein's 3D structure from its amino acid sequence. It's notable that, at least in the U.S., works produced by AI are not copyrightable so there's still question over who would own the patent. Yet, Google's CEO highlighted this aspect of AI regardless.

4. How Google thinks about AI responsibility

And that brings us to Pichai's closing, which heavily focused on AI responsibility. Responsible AI has become a cliche in the tech world, especially considering AI's very real dangers, both social and otherwise. However, Pichai said Google has made moves to address such issues.

For example, to fight deepfakes, AI content generated by Google's platforms features an invisible SynthID embedded into the output, which makes it possible to ID the content as AI-generated. Pichai also mentioned the importance of "navigating profound economic shifts" as "AI will undeniably reshape the workforce." Pichai mentioned how the company has been providing AI training to users as well as highlighting the important role governments can and will play in regulating the technology.