AI Appreciation Day 2026: Trust and infrastructure emerge as the next frontier for AI, say experts

Ish Thukral, Country Head, India & SAARC, Neo4j

As we celebrate Artificial Intelligence Appreciation Day, it's clear that the conversation has shifted from building larger AI models to building smarter AI systems. The real differentiator today is not just the model itself, but the quality of the context it can access. That's where the knowledge layer becomes critical.

A context-rich knowledge graph provides AI with the relationships, meaning, and business insights that traditional data architectures often miss. By connecting structured and unstructured enterprise data into a unified knowledge layer, organizations can significantly improve the accuracy, explainability, and trustworthiness of AI applications while reducing hallucinations and enabling more informed decision-making.

Knowledge graphs are becoming the foundation that enables organizations to build intelligent, reliable, and enterprise-ready AI.

Terry Maiolo, Vice President & General Manager, Asia Pacific, OVHcloud

AI in India and Asia Pacific has moved quickly from pilot to production and enterprises are beginning to ask the harder questions. They want to know where their data sits, who has access to it, and whether the infrastructure underneath stays open and in their control. That’s sovereignty, and sovereignty starts with ownership. We build our own servers, run our own data centres, including one in Mumbai, and by law, we never share customer data with any government or use it beyond what the customer needs. This is the thinking behind how we have approached AI more broadly, from GPU infrastructure to workspaces like OVHai that let enterprises build and deploy AI without giving up control of their data. With India's data protection framework taking shape, such ownership is what enterprises are actively looking for. On AI Appreciation Day, we believe the best way to mark this technology's progress is to keep building AI on foundations that are open, accountable and in the customer's hands.

Sarvjeet Singh Virk, CEO of jUMPP

AI Appreciation Day is a reminder that the real value of artificial intelligence lies not in how advanced the technology is, but in how naturally it fits into people's everyday lives. We are witnessing a fundamental shift from AI as a search or productivity tool to AI as a conversational companion that understands intent, simplifies complexity and enables better decision-making. In financial services, this evolution is particularly significant because conversations build confidence, and confidence drives participation.

For millions of Indians, financial jargon, fragmented information and the fear of making mistakes have long been barriers to investing and managing money. Conversational AI has the potential to bridge this gap by making financial guidance more intuitive, contextual and accessible in the language and format users are most comfortable with. Instead of navigating multiple screens or searching for answers, users can simply ask questions, receive personalised insights and make informed decisions in real time.

India is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation. According to a recent Google-Kantar study, 75% of Indians say they want a daily growth collaborator to help them improve productivity, creativity and decision-making, highlighting the growing appetite for AI that acts as a trusted partner rather than just a tool.

As AI continues to mature, success will no longer be measured by the sophistication of algorithms alone, but by how effectively they empower people. The future of fintech will be defined by AI that is conversational, responsible and deeply human-centric—helping individuals not just access financial services, but truly understand and benefit from them. Ultimately, the greatest achievement of AI will be its ability to democratise financial knowledge and make.

Rajesh Ramdas, Senior Director, Field Engineering (India), Databricks

India's AI story is no longer about experimentation, it is about execution at scale. On AI Appreciation Day, we see a market that has moved past pilots into production, with enterprises across industries building agents that reason over their own data, not generic models trained on the open internet. The winners in this next phase will not be the enterprises using the best models, but those that bring the most relevant context to those models. This is where contextual intelligence matters.

This shift is powered by unified, governed and trusted enterprise data. Organizations that build this foundation today will be best positioned to translate AI investments into outcomes that hold up at scale.

India's advantage is talent, with some of the world's deepest data science and engineering pools now shipping AI systems that move the needle on revenue, cost, and experience. The next 12 months will separate enterprises that ran AI pilots from those that built their data foundation, because that foundation is what will determine who wins.

BG Mahesh, CEO, Sahamati

AI's true potential will not be measured by how autonomous it becomes, but by how responsibly it can act on behalf of people. As AI evolves from systems that assist humans to agents that can discover information, make decisions and execute workflows autonomously, trust becomes as important as intelligence. Responsible innovation is no longer just about building better AI models. It is about building the trusted infrastructure that enables AI agents to identify themselves, obtain user consent, operate within defined guardrails and remain accountable for every action they take.

At Sahamati Labs, we recently outlined this approach in our framework for AI agents in the Account Aggregator ecosystem, exploring how trusted AI can operate within a consent-based data-sharing architecture. India has already shown the world how Digital Public Infrastructure can enable trusted, population-scale innovation through open and interoperable ecosystems. The next opportunity is to extend these principles to AI, creating trusted digital rails in which identity, consent, governance and interoperability are embedded by design. This is where India can lead again by demonstrating that the future of AI is not just intelligent, but trustworthy, inclusive and built for public good.

Paritosh Gandhi, Country Head, India, Infobip

On World AI Appreciation Day, it is important to recognize AI’s potential not just as a tool for automation, but as a force for building more trusted, meaningful customer experiences. As customer expectations continue to rise, the focus of India’s CX story has moved from adding more channels to earning customer trust in every interaction. Today, 96% of brands automate parts of their journeys, yet only 27% use an orchestration platform and barely half possess API-ready tools. This leaves customer experiences fragmented and data governance inconsistent. Customers don’t leave because a brand is offline; they leave when every conversation feels like starting from scratch. That gap is also a reminder of what AI can do at its best: help brands make interactions more relevant, consistent, and human at scale. But realizing that value depends on using AI responsibly, with context, identity, and consent built in from the start.

At Infobip, we view ethics as an engineering discipline, not just a policy document. For us, responsible innovation means building agentic, AI-powered platforms where privacy, DPDP compliance, and human oversight are part of the architecture, so businesses can scale automation with confidence and accountability. Responsible advancement to us means helping businesses move from experimental bots to transparent, governed customer journeys, where AI augments human judgment and every message can stand up to scrutiny - from regulators, from customers, and from our own teams.

Ankit Kedia, Founder & Lead Investor, Capital-A

AI won't be remembered for the models it builds. It will be remembered for the problems it solves. India's biggest opportunity is Industrial AI using AI to make factories smarter, robots more capable, supply chains more efficient and climate technologies more impactful. That's where the next generation of global companies will be built.

Ashish Tandon, Founder & CEO, Indusface

ISC2 puts the global cybersecurity workforce gap at 4.8 million people, and India carries one of the largest shares. That is a dangerous gap to carry, because attackers only need one opening while defenders have to watch everything. Every wave of security automation, from network firewalls to web application firewalls, chipped away at that gap. AI is on track to close more of it than any wave before, giving one analyst the reach of a much bigger team. That's worth appreciating today.

Prateek Jain, COO & Co-founder, Addverb

The first chapter of AI was about generating intelligence. The next chapter is about deploying it. We are entering an era where intelligence is no longer confined to software but embedded in the physical systems that move goods, power factories and keep supply chains running. With nearly one in four manufacturers expected to adopt Physical AI within the next two years, the shift from experimentation to execution is already underway. AI is evolving from a digital assistant into operational intelligence that can perceive, decide and act in real time.

At Addverb, we are pioneering this transition through Physical AI, developing intelligent robotics that make industrial operations more adaptive, resilient and efficient. As we celebrate AI Appreciation Day, the focus should move beyond what AI can create, to how responsibly it transforms the physical world. The true measure of AI's progress will be its ability to amplify human capability, build trust and solve real-world challenges at scale.

Gaurav Rai, Assurance Automation Leader, EY Global Delivery Services India LLP

Artificial intelligence (AI) Appreciation Day is a timely reminder of how far AI has advanced and how quickly it is becoming embedded in business operations. It gives us an opportunity to reflect on how enterprise AI has evolved from experimentation into a business-critical capability. As adoption accelerates, organizations are placing greater emphasis on AI’s ability to deliver trusted outcomes at scale with appropriate governance, transparency and accountability.

With AI expanding into reporting, controls, risk management and decision-making, trust and confidence are becoming increasingly important to scaling AI alongside innovation and technological advancement. For businesses, Responsible AI is becoming a priority, and organizations with real-time monitoring and governance structures report 81% gains in innovation and 48% cost savings, reinforcing the need for strong data, effective governance, model integrity and clear accountability to scale AI sustainably.

The organizations that realize lasting value from AI will be those that combine technological innovation with human judgment. While AI can amplify insight and accelerate decisions, confidence in outcomes will remain essential to creating sustainable value.