France’s AI Envoy Anne Bouverot Visits India to Boost Bilateral Digital Cooperation

France’s global AI ambassador Anne Bouverot touched down in the capital on Thursday morning, kicking off a whirlwind 48-hour mission to turbocharge India-France tech ties just 100 days before President Emmanuel Macron lands here for the blockbuster AI Impact Summit. The 59-year-old former Orange CEO and current Special Envoy for Artificial Intelligence wasted no time, heading straight into closed-door talks at Shastri Bhawan with MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan and MEA Joint Secretary (Europe West) Reenat Sandhu, hammering out the final roadmap for joint AI research labs, talent mobility pacts, and a €300-million Franco-Indian AI startup fund set to be unveiled in February.

By noon she was at AIIMS, watching wide-eyed as Wadhwani AI’s algorithms flagged tuberculosis on chest X-rays in three seconds flat—faster than most radiologists. Doctors demonstrated how the same tech is now saving 8,000 lives a year in Uttar Pradesh alone. “This is exactly the human-centered AI Europe dreams of,” Bouverot told reporters, flanked by patients who once waited months for diagnosis. The French Embassy later posted a video of a 12-year-old girl from Bihar correctly diagnosed in 30 seconds, captioning it “Franco-Indian AI just gave her a future.”

Friday morning she boards the early Vistara flight to Bengaluru, where a red-carpet welcome awaits at IISc. She’ll co-chair the first-ever France-India AI Policy Roundtable with Prof. Govindan Rangarajan, with 40 CEOs from both nations crammed into one room—Thales, Dassault, and Safran on one side; Reliance Jio, Ola Electric, and Tata Digital on the other. Sources say three MoUs will be signed on the spot: a joint PhD program between INRIA and IISc, a €50-million climate-AI center in Karnataka, and a “trusted AI” certification framework that could become the gold standard for Global South nations.

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The visit is pure Macron-Modi chemistry in motion. After the French president’s Republic Day visit was postponed twice, Paris is pulling out all stops for the February 19-20 summit—expect 500 CEOs, 200 startups, and a joint declaration that insiders say will make the India-France AI corridor the third pillar of their strategic partnership after Rafale jets and satellites. Bouverot dropped the biggest hint yet: “Delhi in February won’t just be another summit; it’ll be where Europe and Asia write the next chapter of responsible AI—together.”

As she left AIIMS clutching a tiny tricolour-tied rakhi from a recovered TB patient, Bouverot turned to the cameras and delivered the money quote now exploding across Indian LinkedIn: “France has the regulation, India has the scale. Put them together and we don’t just lead the AI race—we change the finish line for the rest of the world.” With Macron’s plane already booked for February 18, the countdown to the biggest bilateral tech moment since Horizon 2047 just went from months to minutes.

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