Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates will not be speaking at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, the Gates Foundation confirmed on Thursday.
“After careful consideration, and to ensure the focus remains on the AI Summit’s key priorities, Mr. Gates will not be delivering his keynote address,” the Gates Foundation said.
While the Gates Foundation did not provide any specific reason behind the cancellation of the Gates Foundation chair’s keynote address, Gates recently became the centre of controversy after fresh details about his association with disgraced financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein emerged in the latest release of Epstein files by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
Instead of the former Microsoft CEO, whose keynote address was among the most anticipated at the AI summit, the Gates Foundation will be represented by Ankur Vora, the President of Africa and India offices.
Vora is slated to speak at the Summit later on Thursday.
What did the Epstein files say about Bill Gates?
The latest release of the Epstein files by the DOJ made claims about Gates and his association with the disgraced financier.
In one email dated 18 July 2013, Epstein wrote that he resigned from a role linked to the Gates Foundation and BG3, a think tank founded by Gates, after becoming “caught up in a severe marital dispute between Melinda and Bill.”
According to The New York Post, Epstein was likely making the claims on behalf of Gates’ longtime science adviser, Boris Nikolic, who had quit the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation at the time.
“During the past few weeks I have been caught up in a severe marital dispute between Melinda and Bill,” Epstein wrote in Nikolic’s voice in the email dated 18 July 2013.
“… In my role as his right hand I had been asked on mulitple occassion [sic] and in hindsight, wrongly acquiesced into participating in things that have ranged from the morally inappropriate, to the ethically unsound and had been repeatedly asked to do other things that get near and potentially over the line into the illegal,” Epstein wrote in the email.
In a separate draft email to Gates, Epstein, as Nikolic, accused the Microsoft co-founder of engineering a “cover up [sic] so that you can maintain the reputation that you have worked so hard to achieve,” and secretly slipping antibiotics to his then-wife, Melinda French Gates.
“[You] implore me to please delete the emails regarding your std [sic], your request that I provide you antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda, and the description of your penis,” Epstein wrote.
“… I am concerned that if Melinda decides as you said to file for a public divorce, the damage done to the pledge program alone would result in billions of dollars of money no longer being used for social good as Im [sic] sure that some wives and husbands would feel free to retreat from their commitments,” the draft email read.
According to an old Wall Street Journal report, Epstein had threatened to expose the Microsoft co-founder’s alleged affair with Russian bridge player Mila Antonova in 2017, purportedly because Gates wouldn’t join a charitable fund.
How did Bill Gates respond to said revelations?
As the revelations came to light, a spokesperson for Gates rejected Epstein’s claims outright.
“These claims are absolutely absurd and completely false. The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame,” the statement said.
Gates himself too rejected the claims outright, in an interview with Nine News Australia.
“It just reminds me, every minute I spent with him, I regret, and I apologize that I did that,” Gates said, adding that his decision to meet Epstein was “foolish”.
The Microsoft co-founder also labelled the revelations about himself from the latest tranche of documents as “false.”
“Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent, the email is false,” Gates said. “So, I don’t know what his thinking was there. Was he trying to attack me in some way?”
While Gates acknowledged that he met Epstein in 2011, he denied ever visiting Epstein’s private island.
