Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and billionaire, was unable to speak at an artificial intelligence summit in India due to the "Epstein scandal."
Medianews.az, citing foreign media, reports that Bill Gates' speech at the event called "AI Impact Summit 2026" was planned from the beginning. The organizers of the summit officially announced this last week. However, although Bill Gates attended the event, he declined to give a speech a few hours before it started.
A statement released by the Gates Foundation clarified this matter. It was stated that the billionaire did not take the podium to avoid diverting public attention from the main work of the summit. In other words, if Bill Gates had spoken, issues related to artificial intelligence would have been sidelined, the "Epstein scandal" would have come to the forefront, and it would have become the agenda of the summit.
It should be recalled that Bill Gates had contacts with American financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of sexual assault and various other serious crimes, in the 2010s. Last months' disclosures of hundreds of thousands of documents related to Epstein, who died mysteriously while in detention in 2019, have brought his relationship with Gates back into the spotlight. Allegations that have cast a shadow over Gates' reputation have emerged. Bill Gates expressed regret for knowing Epstein but denied some of the allegations made against him.