 "Why did Bill Gates skip India AI Impact Summit address? His links to Epstein, explained")
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has pulled out of the India AI Impact Summit, which is being held in Delhi from February 16-21. He was set to deliver a keynote address today (February 19) at Bharat Mandapam.
However, the Gates Foundation announced, just hours before his appearance, that after “careful consideration”, the billionaire will skip the summit. This comes amid furore over recent revelations related to Gates in the Epstein files.
We take a closer look.
Bill Gates skips India AI summit
After confirming that Bill Gates would deliver a keynote address at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in Delhi, the Gates Foundation took a U-turn.
It said on Thursday that the Microsoft co-founder will not speak at the summit.
“After careful consideration, and to ensure the focus remains on the Al Summit’s key priorities, Mr. Gates will not be delivering his keynote address”, the foundation’s official account posed.
— Gates Foundation India (@BMGFIndia) February 19, 2026
Ankur Vora, president of the Africa and India offices, will represent the foundation, addressing the summit in New Delhi today.
Just days back, the Gates Foundation had dismissed rumours of his absence and asserted he would attend the summit.
Bill Gates’ cancellation comes after the US Department of Justice (DoJ) released millions of documents last month that included communication between the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Gates, shedding new light on their friendship.
Quick Reads
View AllSources told NDTV earlier that the government wanted the focus to remain on AI deliberations and not anything else.
Bill Gates’ link to Epstein
The latest document dump by the US DoJ has put the spotlight on Bill Gates’ relationship to paedophile Epstein.
Gates got to know the disgraced financier at the beginning of 2011, three years after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor.
The billionaire met the convicted sexual offender on multiple occasions and eventually cut ties with him in late 2014, as per Forbes.
Gates met Epstein for the first time on January 31, 2011, at the financier’s Manhattan townhouse, The New York Times (NYT) reported in 2019. The duo were connected by two Gates Foundation officials, Melanie Walker and Boris Nikolic, who knew Epstein.
Gates “ended up staying there quite late,” he said in an email to colleagues the next day, adding Epstein’s “lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me.”
Two emails Epstein sent to himself on July 18, 2013, allege that Gates had extramarital “sex with Russian girls” that resulted in a sexually transmitted infection requiring antibiotics.
Epstein claimed in an email that Gates sought to “surreptitiously give” the antibiotics to his then-wife, Melinda Gates.
In another, Gates allegedly asked the writer of the mail to participate “in things that have ranged from the morally inappropriate to the ethically unsound” and were “repeatedly asked” to do things “that get near and potentially over the line into the illegal.”
The writer claimed they helped Gates “get drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with russian girls,” facilitated the billionaire’s “illicit trysts, with married women” and was asked to give Adderall to Gates.
Epstein claimed that Gates urged him to delete emails “regarding your std, your request that I provide you antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda [French Gates], and the description of your penis. You also made it clear to me that I am not to refer to [redacted] as that is another topic that must remain between the two of us.”
Gates has rejected these claims. “Apparently Jeffrey wrote an email to himself,” the Microsoft co-founder told Australia’s 9 News. “That email was never sent, the email is you know, false. So I don’t know what his thinking was there.”
In 2017, Epstein sent an email to Gates asking him to reimburse costs for Russian bridge player Mila Antonova, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported, citing anonymous sources.
They said “the tone of the message was that Epstein knew about” an affair Gates had with Antonova in 2010 “and could expose it.” Neither Gates nor Antonova has addressed the affair claims.
A Gates spokesman told WSJ the billionaire had no “financial dealings” with Epstein and had only discussed philanthropy with the disgraced financier. “Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates.”
More allegations against Bill Gates
Emails, photographs and news reports indicate that Epstein and Gates regularly met between 2011 and 2014.
Gates met Epstein at his New York residence, as well as flew on Epstein’s private plane. But a Gates spokesperson told NYT he did not know it was the financier’s plane.
Epstein tried to lure Gates into a plan for a charitable fund with Gates’ money and the help of JPMorgan Chase and other billionaire donors.
The charity was envisaged to support health projects around the world. In an email to JPMorgan executives on August 16, 2011, Epstein said the fund “will allow Bill to have access to higher quality people , investment , allocation , governance without upsetting either his marriage or the sensitvites [sic] of the current foundation employees,” as quoted by WSJ.
In an unpublished 2014 magazine profile of Epstein, writer Michael Wolff alleged the convicted sex offender had been “advising Gates on a vast expansion and restructuring of the Gates foundation,” with Epstein proposing “a way to leverage” the Gates Foundation’s resources “to accommodate many other fortunes” from other billionaires.
However, the plans for the fund appeared to wane by the end of 2014, with Gates sending an email to Epstein in December of that year, “It is a good idea but it won’t come together with 4-6 partners anytime soon.”
Epstein complained to an acquaintance at the end of 2014 that Gates “had stopped talking to him,” NYT reported, citing anonymous sources.
Bridgitt Arnold, a spokeswoman for Gates, said “Over time, Gates and his team realised Epstein’s capabilities and ideas were not legitimate and all contact with Epstein was discontinued.”
She also claimed that Gates never socialised or attended parties with Epstein, adding that no young and attractive women participated in their meetings. “Bill only met with Epstein to discuss philanthropy,” Arnold said.
There are also allegations from an unnamed person who told Epstein in November 2017 she heard Gates being described as “a strange behavior guy and … always drunk” and discussed the consideration of legal action against him for unspecified alleged misconduct.
Gates’ on Epstein ties
The Microsoft cofounder has admitted to a friendly relationship with Epstein and expressed regret.
In a rare public comment on the matter, Gates told 9 News, “It’s factually true that I was only at dinners, you know, I never went to the island. I never met any women. And so, you know, the more that comes out, the more clear it’ll be that although the time was a mistake, it had nothing to do with that kind of behavior.”
However, an October 2011 email to Epstein consisted of a reminder that said, “gates to island.”
Gates’ relationship with Epstein was reportedly a reason for Melinda French Gate’s 2021 divorce from her husband. She told NPR recently that the new allegations in Epstein’s files evoked memories of painful times in her marriage.
She had expressed discomfort with her husband spending time with the sex offender, but Gates continued the interactions, people who were at or briefed on gatherings with the two men told NYT.
French Gates described Epstein’s abuse “beyond heartbreaking” and expressed sympathy for his victims. “Whatever questions remain” about Epstein’s actions, “those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband,” French Gates said to NPR. “They need to answer to those things, not me.”
She said that the details of Epstein’s emails about Gates make her feel “unbelievable sadness” and remind her why, “I had to leave my marriage, I wanted to leave my marriage.”
With inputs from agencies
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