Sri Lanka, Sept. 30 -- Sri Lanka will need private investment to turn its emerging digital infrastructure into economic gains, while retaining control over the AI systems and data it considers critical, Presidential Digital Economy Advisor Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya said yesterday.

Acknowledging the country could not afford to build or own every part of its AI infrastructure, Wijayasuriya said it needed to decide what to build, buy, rent and share, and where national control was essential.

"What's important more than the physical presence of servers or GPUs? What's important is the degree of control that you have," Wijayasuriya said, while addressing AI Conference 2026 organised by the Ministry of Digital Economy and SLT-MOBITEL. The event ...