“No regrets”. That is how former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka feels about that moment from around 10 years ago when Infosys missed out on opportunity to invest in OpenAI. Sikka on Wednesday was attending the India Today AI Summit 2026, when we asked him about the much-rumoured and talked-about investment that Infosys planned in OpenAI around 10 years ago. His answer on missing out on it, “No, no regrets at all.”
Then, borrowing from The Matrix, he quoted Morpheus: “What happened, happened and couldn’t have happened any other way.”
The remark gives an answer to one of Indian technology’s most fascinating “what-if” stories. Sikka, speaking at the India Today AI Summit 2026, also talked about the importance of building inclusive AI technologies and how it’s a transformative technology we need to prepare for.
The big What if
Back in 2015, long before ChatGPT or Gemini entered everyday vocabulary, Sikka was already convinced artificial intelligence would reshape enterprise software. Neural networks had begun outperforming humans in image recognition benchmarks, and to him, the trajectory was obvious.
His conviction to back artificial intelligence as the next technological moment came with the rise of AlexNet. He recalled how breakthroughs in ImageNet-based deep learning systems around the early 2010s fundamentally changed the trajectory of computing. Sikka said witnessing these advances convinced him that AI would become the next foundational layer of software, much like the internet or cloud computing before it.
That realisation, he explained, was what pushed him to aggressively explore AI investments and reposition enterprise technology around intelligent systems, long before the current generative AI boom brought artificial intelligence into the mainstream.
During his tenure, Infosys explored becoming an AI-first company and even considered a significant investment in OpenAI – then a nonprofit research lab led by Sam Altman and backed by Silicon Valley visionaries.
But history took a different turn
Internal disagreements over governance, strategy, and risk appetite created friction between Sikka’s vision and Infosys’ more conservative leadership. The company eventually stepped back from the OpenAI opportunity, and Sikka resigned in 2017. Analysts today estimate that stake could have been worth tens of billions of dollars as OpenAI evolved into one of the defining companies of the AI era. Since OpenAI was a nonprofit, Infosys did contribute $3 million as donation but never invested in any stakes of the company.
The missed opportunity has since become symbolic of a broader challenge for Indian IT: timing the shift from services to deep technology innovation.
OpenAI’s growth post 2022
While Infosys continued to excel in global IT services, OpenAI accelerated at breathtaking speed. This growth has put India as the largest user-base for ChatGPT in Asia which speaks volumes about the capabilities of this technology.
Yet Sikka himself rejects the idea of technological regret. At recent discussions, he has argued that the industry’s obsession with artificial general intelligence is misplaced, calling AI “an unbelievably powerful tool” rather than a mystical endpoint.
In hindsight, Infosys may have missed a financial windfall and perhaps a chance to shape the global AI narrative. But Sikka’s perspective reframes the moment differently: innovation is rarely linear, and companies evolve within the constraints of culture, timing, and consensus.
