Opening Remarks by Anita Manwani & Lifetime of Transformation Award to Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra

Hello everyone and welcome back to TYON 2026. You know, human-centered and AI-powered is not just a theme. It is what is unfolding around us every day. And as it unfolds, we are reminded that what makes things happen is people. People who invent, people who discover. And you heard yesterday's theme was all about infrastructure. AI is not just about software. It is really scaling the infrastructure. And when we scale the infrastructure, we make possible how we have infrastructure and intelligence really powering verticals like space tech, like media and entertainment. And this is what today is going to be all about, bringing it all together. And of course I want to kind of focus also on two important sessions that you're going to hear about today, which is you're going to hear about how physics and cell biology is really the foundation and the discoveries that all of AI is built upon, and for that we will have our Nobel laureates on the panel. Right after this first opening panel, we bring to you three women leaders who are amazing and they're going to be, they have gone from the phase of building phenomenal companies, leading public companies, and now they are reinventing for the world of AI. And these women, Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo, Margot Georgiadis, former CEO of Mattel and Ancestry, as well as Miam Neafi, the CEO of Minted. So don't miss these sessions. Don't miss the session where we learn more from thought leaders from Nvidia about what's next. And so we have a very exciting day. We have media giants who are going to be coming in and sharing with us how they are using AI, and I can't be more happy to, you know, with the team that has put this all together. As a reminder, this is the team that makes it happen. AJ, we are the smallest team that's brought together the largest entrepreneurship conference in the world, built entirely and delivered to you entirely by 150 plus volunteers. So give them a round of applause. They have done an amazing job. Vani Suresh, Patricia Aosta, and Sharma, if your registrations and all feel that you're not getting everything in time, just please be patient. You will all, I look forward to seeing all of you at the gala. So I want to just turn back to what makes AI infrastructure really usable. What makes intelligence really usable? It is really memory that binds it all. We heard this from Sumit in the conversation with Sumit Sadana and Santo Janaran yesterday. But it is my great pleasure to honor a dear friend and leader who has been a serial entrepreneur as well as changed and shaped the landscape of memory and its role. This is TAI's Lifetime of Transformations Award, and this award recognizes leaders who have fundamentally changed industries and created lasting global impact. This is none other than Sanjay Mehrotra, who has had a major impact on the memory industry, being a co-founder of SanDisk, which dominated the consumer flash market, and then he repositioned flash from cameras and phones to flash for AI infrastructure and data centers. After a successful acquisition of SanDisk, Sanjay moved on to lead and be the CEO of Micron. And what a juggernaut he has made it. He just reminded me that it is over $600 million of valuation as of this morning. I hope it just continues northwards. If SanDisk was about creating and scaling flash, Micron is where Sanjay turned memory into strategic AI infrastructure. But today Micron is a center of a lot of global activities. They are building factories and capabilities all across the world, creating jobs globally. So I want to invite Sanjay to receive this award for his global impact. Thank you. Center stage.