The AI Impact Summit 2026, which India will host from February 16 to 20, is intended to generate actionable recommendations that contribute to long-term artificial intelligence (AI) governance objectives rather than framing immediate binding regulations.
Coming to the Global South for the first time, the summit represents the latest chapter in an evolving international conversation on AI governance. What began as the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in the UK in November 2023, where 28 countries signed the landmark Bletchley Declaration focusing on identifying AI safety risks, has progressively broadened its scope. The Seoul Summit in May 2024 expanded discussions to include innovation and inclusivity alongside safety, while the Paris AI Action Summit in February 2025 emphasised practical implementation and economic opportunities.
India’s pitch is somewhat different. Where previous summits wrestled with catastrophic risks and regulatory frameworks, New Delhi is centring the conversation on what Electronics and IT Secretary S Krishnan calls “People, Planet, and Progress” – to build AI solutions that focus on on-ground issues, an approach that reflects India’s position both as an aspiring AI power and a voice for the Global South.
The summit comes at a time of global upheavals, as conversations around AI have evolved from just looking at the upsides of the technology to mounting concerns over the technology’s impact on everyday jobs and its drain on resources like energy and power. Yet, most governments have outlined the technology as a strategic asset. India wants a larger share of the pie.
India AI Impact Summit: What to expect
Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has billed the summit as the biggest one so far, and had last month said the government has received phenomenal response from across the world.
Governments, industry leaders, researchers, civil society organisations, and international institutions are set to attend the event. It is expected to see participation from over 100 countries, including 15 to 20 heads of government, over 50 ministers from various countries, and more than 40 CEOs of leading global and Indian companies, such as Google’s Sundar Pichai and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the event, and is also likely to host a dinner and address a CEO roundtable.
The event is set to deliberate upon multiple themes, with working groups deliberating on issues, including AI and its impact on work, trust and safety protocols for AI models, and using AI in specific industries. The government will also launch a number of indigenous AI language models during the summit, including both foundational models and small language models, one of the key focus areas of the Rs 10,370 crore IndiaAI Mission.
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The summit will feature a startup showcase of more than 500 AI startups and host around 500 sessions alongside the main programme, making it one of the most comprehensive AI-focused global convenings, the government said in a press statement.
Opening up to China
Among those attending, a delegation from China is also expected. New Delhi had sent a formal invitation to Beijing last year, as both countries look to build domestic capacity in AI.
The AI Summit is not a formal grouping of countries. Invitations to countries to join the forum are decided by the host country. When the UK hosted the first summit, there was pushback from some of Britain’s closest allies and its own lawmakers over its invitation to China, but the country’s government eventually went ahead with the invitation. China was also part of the subsequent two summits.
India’s invitation to China marked yet another step in the easing of bilateral ties. Earlier this year, direct flights between the two countries resumed after a gap of over five years. Similarly, while China earlier stonewalled applications by companies that supply components made of rare earth metals to India’s automobile manufacturers (it imposed a blockade on critical minerals following US tariffs), it has now started to clear some applications.
On hardware, energy
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One key area where India has a disadvantage compared with most other countries in the AI race is an absence of domestically available hardware that is powering the revolution. India’s access to cutting edge computing power via graphics processing units (GPUs) is largely tied to importing these devices, which prevents the country from true self-reliance in the sector.
As part of the recently announced framework for an interim trade deal between India and the US, there may be some promising news for New Delhi, as the deal would “significantly increase trade in technology products, including GPUs and other goods used in data centers, and expand joint technology cooperation”.
This comes as India announced a tax holiday for foreign companies setting up data centres in the country until 2047. In the Union Budget 2026-27, India slashed by half the budgetary allowance for its flagship AI mission under which it looked to subsidise compute costs for the country’s startups, and its iPhone exports are booming.
India is also looking at opening up the nuclear energy space, sensing that it would be crucial in powering AI data centres that it is trying to court. Last month, Vaishnaw said that nuclear power would be a key component going forward as AI requires a huge amount of energy.
