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India is a privileged country to host the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Impact Summit, 2026,  at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi from 16 to 20 February this year. In fact, India is the fourth country to organise this Summit after the U.K., South Korea, and France. It was attended by the leaders of about 20 countries, including Brazil, France, Switzerland, Spain, Serbia, Slovakia, Croatia, Estonia, Netherlands, Finland, Greece, Mauritius, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Bolivia, Guyana and Seychelles. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was one of the prominent figures to attend the event. Besides that, representatives from about 100 countries also attended the Summit. Global tech leaders Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman were among others who made their presence conspicuous in the event. The AI Impact event featured more than 3,000 speakers over 500 sessions and also hosted more than 300 exhibitions and live demonstrations of AI technology and start-ups, which are “structured across three thematic chakras-People, Planet and Progress”. Nearly 2.5 lakh visitors attended the event. On 17th February, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the “India AI Impact Expo, 2026, which included pavilions from 13 other countries. The big tech leaders such as Google’s Sundar Pichai and Open AI CEO Sam Altman chaired the “headline” sessions in the august presence of Demis Hassabis (CEO of DeepMind Technologies), Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) and Brad Smith (Microsoft President). NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft founder Bill Gates didn't attend the event “due to unforeseen circumstances".

The Objective of the Summit

Stating the aim of the Summit, a senior official of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said:

India has consistently championed the voice of developing economies in digital policy forums. The summit will push for equitable access to AI resources and fair rule-making.” He further added that Unlike developed countries, India was not seeking to build regulatory frameworks, but was focusing the summit on a “human-centric” approach, for the “economic good” of all.”1 The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a post on X on the occasion said, “The AI Impact Summit will enrich global discourse on diverse aspects of AI, such as innovation, collaboration, responsible use and more, I am confident that the outcomes of the summit will help shape a future that is progressive, innovative and opportunity-driven.”2 In a text interview made by the Prime Minister to the news agency Asian News International (ANI), he said, “My vision for AI in Atmanirbhar Bharat rests on three pillars: sovereignty, inclusitivity, and innovation. My vision is that India should be among the top three AI superpowers globally, not just in the consumption of AI but in the creation of models.” He further said, “Every Indian will experience AI as an enabler of opportunity, a multiplier of capability, and a servant of human dignity, not as a threat to their livelihood or an instrument of control. Atmanirbhar Bharat in AI means India writing its own code for the digital century, and through the IndiaAI Mission, we are ensuring that the code reflects our values, serves our purpose, and positions India as a responsible AI leader for the world.”3

The Outcome

A day after the event's scheduled conclusion, eighty-five countries and three international organisations signed the New Delhi Declaration at the AI Impact Summit. Regarding the declaration, the government said in a statement:

“Guided by the principle of Sarvajan Hitaya, Sarvajan Sukhaya (Welfare for all, Happiness for all), the Declaration underscores that the benefits of AI must be equitably shared across humanity.”

Major participants, including the United States and China, endorsed the document. Like the 2023 G20 Summit, the road to consensus was paved with non-binding and voluntary commitments.

While the Declaration specifically mentions AI safety and trust, its commitment is mostly loaded in favour of knowledge sharing. The 900-word statement offers a “Charter for the Democratic Diffusion of AI” as a “voluntary and non-binding framework to promote access to foundational AI resources, support locally relevant innovation, and strengthen resilient AI ecosystems while respecting national laws.” It also introduces a Global AI impact Commons, which is described as a voluntary initiative, to exhibit AI use cases for governments to draw inspiration from.4 Regarding security and trust, the statement says, “Advancing secure, trustworthy and robust AI is foundational to building trust and maximising societal and economic benefits. Noting that deepening our understanding of the potential security aspects remains important, we recognise the importance of security in AI systems, industry-led voluntary measures, and the adoption of technical solutions, and appropriate policy frameworks that enable innovation while promoting public interest throughout the AI's lifecycle.”5 The statement emphasized the fact that achieving “the full promise of AI requires equipping individuals with relevant skills by expanding AI human resources development, specific initiatives on education, AI workforce development, training of public officials enhancing public awareness of AI capabilities, increasing AI literacy, as well as upgrading vocational and training ecosystems.”6

The statement further stipulated, “We take note of the voluntary guiding principles for reskilling in the age of AI and the playbook on AI workforce development, which would support participants in preparation for a future AI-driven economy.”7 Thus, this declaration mainly emphasizes democratising AI besides developing human capital vis-a-vis AI. Nearly all commitments are described in the statement as "voluntary" and “non-binding", encouraging wider participation. This is in tune with India's stated multilateral priorities. In the statement, the term “Global AI Impact Commons” is described as which would serve as a database of use cases for countries to draw inspiration from; “Trusted AI Commons” is described as a “repository of tools, benchmarks, and best practices that support the development of secure and trustworthy AI systems”; “International Network of AI for Science Institutions” is supposed to link technical institutes around the world;

“The Summit is expected to catalyse long-term international partnerships and position AI as a key driver of economic growth,” the government said in a statement. It also added that there was “broad-based consensus on leveraging AI for economic growth and social good.”8

Further Takeaways From the Summit

  • During this Summit, India joined the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative, which seeks to build a network of like-minded countries opposed to the concentration of power in electronics manufacturing and critical minerals.9
  • The event became a witness to the long-anticipated launch of India's first domestically trained multi-billion parameter LLMs by Sarvam AI. Sarvam is a Bengaluru-based firm having millions of dollars in private equity investment as well as government support in subsidised access to computing resources under the IndiaAI Mission. According to the firm, its models are efficient and beat comparable models at many benchmarks. It has announced that its models will be open source. After the Summit, it launched a chatbot interface in beta to interact with its LLMs.10
  • The government also touted $250 billion in investment commitments, as well as $20 billion in commitments for frontier deep tech research.11
  • (i) Moreover, the Summit ushered a wave of investment commitments too. To begin with, Reliance Industries Ltd. announced commitments of Rs. 10 lakh crore in domestic AI, only a bit higher than Adani group's similar commitment.12
    (ii)The Adani Group unveiled a $100-billion investment to develop renewable-energy powered, hyperscale AI-ready data centres by 2035, one of the world's largest integrated energy-compute commitments. The initiative is expected to catalyse an additional $150 billion across server manufacturing, cloud platforms, and supporting industries, creating a projected $250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India.13
    (iii) Google provided a few fresh details about its existing $15 billion investment in data centre and AI projects in India, such as a subsea cable system that would directly connect India and the U.S.14
    (iv) The event culminated in high-profile pacts between OpenAI and the Tata group, along with another agreement between Anthropic and Infosys. OpenAI stated that it would lease 100 megawatts of data centre capacity from Tata's HyperVault and provide its advanced models to the firm's employees. The pacts drew attention from all because of the stock price damage that both firms took after Anthropic’s latest coding LLM shocked investors with its advanced capabilities.15
    (v) Yotta Data Services, a domestic data centre operator, announced $2 billion in data centre infrastructure built-out, with graphics processing units from Nvidia.16
    (vi) The IndiaAI Mission will add 20,000 more graphics processing units (GPUs) to the government-run “common compute” cluster, which is open for local firms, researchers and academia to use, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a briefing at the AI Summit. It was further stated that the GPUs will be installed in the common compute cluster “within the next six months". Further, he said, “As we go forward, I will be launching the AI Mission 2.0 where there will be a huge focus on research and development, on innovation, on AI diffusion, on further strengthening the common compute that we have been able to develop” in the first phase of the mission.17

The Next Summit

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Impact Summit in 2027 will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, President Guy Parmelin announced after the current Summit came to an end.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, humanity is in the throes of the AI revolution. There is a race among the nations to reap the benefits of artificial intelligence faster than others. However, being a new and evolving technology, AI is also suffering from teething problems. In this reference, the AI Impact Summit, 2026 has done well to provide an opportunity to the common participants to understand various aspects of AI, its pros and cons in the long run. Unlike the past such summits, it has not followed the same lines of regulating AI. It seems logical also, just because of its limited knowledge scenario. At present, there is a fear syndrome lurking in the prevailing atmosphere due to the misuse of AI. In this regard, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has clearly said that ‘India sees future, not fear in AI'. In the context of India, the goal of Viksit Bharat can be achieved with the help of judicious use of AI. One of the main gains of this summit has been the AI democratisation, which carries a larger picture of the future where this new technology will not be under the control of some developed and powerful nations. Though there are dangers and pitfalls ahead on the road to the growth of AI, the role and importance of such events cannot be minimised. India's lead in organising such an important event also signifies the growing stature of the Global South in international affairs. The AI Impact Summit, 2026, has definitely been able to give a direction in the field of economic growth and governance worldwide.

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References:

  • Suhasini Haider, AI Impact Summit 2026 begins today, Modi to inaugurate an India AI Expo, The Hindu, Feb 16, 2026.
  • The Hindu Bureau, India's flagship AI summit, opens to massive crowds, The Hindu, Feb 17, 2026.
  • The Hindu Bureau, Global cooperation is crucial to tackle AI bias and risks, says PM, The Hindu, Feb 18, 2026.
  • Aroon Deep, AI Impact Summit: 85 countries, 3 bodies sign New Delhi Declaration, The Hindu, Feb 22, 2026.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • Aroon Deep, What are the takeaways from the AI summit? The Hindu, Feb 22, 2026.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • Press Trust of India, Adani commits $100 bn to build AI-ready data centres, The Hindu, Feb 18, 2026.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid.
  • The Hindu Bureau, ‘AI Mission 2.0 will have more GPUs for common compute', The Hindu, Feb 18, 2026.
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