Inside the Debate Over AI’s Ownership Model

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At a time when artificial intelligence is redrawing the boundaries of power, productivity, and possibility, one question hung in the air during a fireside conversation between Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, and Shantanu Narayen, chairman and CEO of Adobe: Who will own the future of AI, a few companies or everyone?

Mittal, reflecting on India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for open standards and democratized AI, said: “There are strong commercial interests. Is there a danger that some of the leading AI companies may keep things tightly controlled? Will we have to fight hard to keep AI open?”

To which, Narayen replied: “There will inevitably be tension between commercial enterprises that want to keep information proprietary and the broader responsibility to advance humanity,” he said. “The Prime Minister was right, this will be an ongoing challenge.”

For Narayen, the answer lies in redefining what competitive advantage really means and not in abandoning commercial incentives.

“Speaking for Adobe, we’ve always believed in open standards,” he said, pointing to the example of PDF. “One reason PDF became so widely adopted is because it was made an open standard.”

PDF’s worldwide use, across governments, enterprises, and individuals, was built not by locking it down, but by opening it up. The format became foundational precisely because it wasn’t confined.

So, as large AI developers race to build ever more powerful models, the temptation to treat those models as the ultimate moat is strong. But Narayen suggested that clinging too tightly to proprietary control may be shortsighted.

“Companies will need to think differently about what constitutes sustainable advantage,” he said. “Over time, the advantage cannot just be the model itself. It must be the use cases, what people are able to do with that model.”

From Models to Meaning

The AI gold rush has, so far, been dominated by a race for scale, bigger models, more parameters, more data. But Narayen’s argument points to a second phase: integration.

The companies that win may not be those with the most guarded models, but those that embed AI seamlessly into workflows, creativity, healthcare, governance, and education.

It’s a view shaped by Adobe’s own evolution, from boxed software to cloud platforms to AI-enabled creative tools. Narayen stressed that technology shifts reward those who enable ecosystems, not just those who hoard infrastructure.

That shift, he argued, “will require companies to evolve, to avoid being disrupted by clinging to proprietary control rather than focusing on value creation.”

India’s Moment

If openness is the battleground, Narayen believes India is uniquely positioned to shape the outcome.

“I’m confident about India’s position in this landscape,” he said. “In fact, I’m more confident about what will happen here than in many other countries.”

Scale, for one. India is on track to become one of the world’s largest AI user bases. But beyond sheer numbers lies something more strategic: India’s history of digital public infrastructure, open ecosystems, and frugal innovation.

Mittal highlighted this with a broader question: how can India ensure that it isn’t just a massive consumer of global AI products, but also a model for how AI is built, governed, and deployed responsibly?

The subtext of the exchange was clear: concentration risks narrowing AI’s promise, while open standards and interoperability could broaden it.