Something remarkable is happening in New Delhi this week. From February 16-20, 2026, India is hosting what might be the most important AI gathering of the year and it’s not happening in Silicon Valley, London, or Seoul. For the first time ever, the Global South is taking center stage in shaping how artificial intelligence will transform our world.
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 isn’t just another tech conference. It’s a deliberate statement about who gets to decide AI’s future, and more importantly, who benefits from it.
Why This Summit Is Different From Everything That Came Before
If you’ve been following the global AI conversation, you’ve probably noticed a pattern. The UK hosted a summit focused on AI “Safety.” France followed with AI “Action.” Korea contributed their perspective. Rwanda brought African voices to the table.
Each of these gatherings made important contributions, but they all shared something in common: they were primarily about governance, regulation, and managing risks. Important stuff, absolutely. But here’s what was missing: what about the billions of people who need AI to solve actual problems right now?
That’s where India’s approach fundamentally differs. The theme isn’t Safety or Action it’s Impact.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi made this explicit when announcing the summit: India wants to move from “high-level political statements to demonstrable impact and tangible progress.” Translation: enough talking about what AI might do. Let’s focus on what it’s actually doing and how to make it work for everyone.
The Numbers That Tell the Story
Before we dive into the details, let’s appreciate the scale of what’s happening:
- 15-20 Heads of Government confirmed to attend
- 50+ international ministers participating
- 45+ countries sending ministerial delegations
- 100+ countries engaged through working groups
- 40+ global and Indian CEOs at the table
- UN Secretary-General António Guterres attending in person
- 300+ exhibitors from India and 30+ countries
- 700+ session proposals received
- 15,000+ registrations for pre-summit challenges from 135 countries
- 4,700+ submissions to the global AI challenges
These aren’t courtesy appearances. These are serious commitments from people who shape global policy, control massive resources, and make decisions affecting billions of lives.
The Framework: Three Sutras and Seven Chakras
Here’s where things get interesting. Instead of the usual Western framework of panels, keynotes, and networking sessions, India structured the entire summit around philosophical concepts that have deeper meaning.
The Three Sutras (Guiding Principles)
The word “Sutra” in Sanskrit means a thread that weaves wisdom and action together. The summit is built on three:
1. People: AI must serve humanity in all its diversity, preserving dignity and ensuring inclusion. Technology should be human-centered, respecting cultural identities, and ensuring no one gets left behind.
2. Planet: AI innovation must align with environmental stewardship and sustainability. Progress can’t come at the cost of our shared environment. AI should reduce its own resource footprint while helping solve climate challenges.
3. Progress: AI’s benefits must be equitably shared, advancing global development and prosperity. This means democratizing access to AI infrastructure compute, data, models so every country can develop solutions for their specific needs.
Notice what’s different here? Western AI summits often lead with safety, alignment, and existential risk. India starts with: “How do we make sure AI actually helps people, protects the planet, and spreads prosperity fairly?”
It’s a fundamentally different starting point, and it matters.
The Seven Chakras (Areas of Action)
“Chakra” in this context refers to interconnected spheres of energy and focus. The summit organizes all discussions, working groups, and outcomes around seven key areas:
1. Human Capital – Addressing workforce transformation, skilling, and ensuring people aren’t left behind as AI reshapes work.
2. Inclusion – Making AI accessible across languages, cultures, abilities, and economic circumstances. This is huge for India with its 22 official languages and enormous diversity.
3. Safe & Trusted AI – Building AI systems that are reliable, secure, ethical, and aligned with human values. This is where safety concerns get addressed, but in a development context.
4. Resilience – Using AI to strengthen societies against climate disasters, pandemics, economic shocks, and other threats. Making systems robust, not just efficient.
5. Science – Accelerating scientific discovery and research through AI. From drug development to materials science to fundamental physics.
6. Democratizing AI Resources – This is the big one. Ensuring countries worldwide have access to compute infrastructure, datasets, and models so they can build their own AI solutions.
7. Social Good – Applying AI directly to healthcare, education, agriculture, governance, and other sectors that serve public needs.
Each Chakra has dedicated working groups where over 100 countries are actively participating, developing concrete action plans and commitments.
The Three Global Challenges That Are Actually Pretty Genius
Instead of just talking about AI for good, India launched three massive global competitions that are already generating real solutions:
YUVAi: The Youth Challenge
This one’s for people aged 13-21. The idea? Young people often have the most creative ideas for how technology should work because they’re not constrained by “that’s how we’ve always done it” thinking.
Over 15,000 young people from 135 countries registered. The finalists get to present their innovations at the summit itself, in front of global leaders and potential investors. It’s implemented in partnership with MY Bharat and NIELIT.
Think about what this does: it signals to an entire generation that their ideas matter in shaping AI’s future, and it gives young innovators from developing countries a platform they’d never otherwise have.
AI by HER: Promoting Gender Equity
AI has a well-documented gender problem. Most AI researchers and developers are men. Many AI systems exhibit gender bias. Women in tech face systematic barriers.
India’s “AI by HER” challenge specifically promotes solutions developed by women and teams focused on gender equity. It’s implemented with NITI Aayog’s Women Entrepreneurship Platform.
This isn’t tokenism. It’s recognizing that if AI is supposed to serve all of humanity, it needs to be built by people who represent humanity’s full diversity.
AI for All: The Global Impact Challenge
This is the big one: identify AI solutions that enable large-scale impact. Not research papers. Not theoretical possibilities. Actual working solutions that solve real problems for real people.
The challenge attracted 4,700 submissions from around the world. The winners get showcased at the summit and supported by Startup India meaning potential access to funding, markets, and implementation partners.
Examples of what’s being evaluated: AI systems for improving agricultural yields in drought-prone regions. Tools for delivering quality education in areas without many teachers. Healthcare diagnostics that work in low-resource settings.
The emphasis is on solutions that can scale and that address the needs of the Global South specifically.
The IndiaAI Fellowship: Creating an Army of AI Experts
Here’s an announcement that flew under the radar but might be one of the most impactful outcomes: India just expanded its IndiaAI Fellowship to support 13,500 scholars.
Break that down:
- 8,000 undergraduate fellowships
- 5,000 postgraduate fellowships
- 500 PhD researcher positions
And here’s what’s radical about it: these fellowships aren’t just for computer science students. They’re open to students from engineering, medicine, law, commerce, business, and liberal arts.
Why does that matter? Because AI isn’t just a technical challenge. It’s a social, ethical, legal, economic, and cultural challenge. We need lawyers who understand AI. We need doctors who can evaluate AI medical tools. We need business experts who can deploy AI responsibly. We need ethicists and social scientists in the conversation.
India is systematically building that diverse expertise, and it’s putting these fellowships on par with PM Research Fellowships one of the country’s most prestigious academic programs.
There’s now a dedicated portal (fellowship.indiaai.gov.in) where students can apply, track progress, connect with mentors, and collaborate. This is infrastructure for building long-term AI capacity.
The 300+ Pre-Summit Events: Building Momentum Globally
One brilliant aspect of India’s approach: the summit didn’t start on February 16. It started months ago with a cascade of pre-summit events designed to gather input, build consensus, and develop concrete proposals.
The numbers tell the story:
- Approximately 300 pre-summit events organized
- 57 of these held across 25+ countries
- Regional AI Impact Conferences throughout India
- Five virtual stakeholder consultations in June 2025 with 300+ participants
- International conferences on specific topics (AI for climate, AI for healthcare, AI for agriculture)
Take the workshop at Ashoka University focused on using AI for weather forecasting and climate resilience. Researchers and practitioners discussed AI-driven approaches for monsoon and flood prediction—crucial issues for India and the broader region.
Or the conference at KPR College on AI for Sustainable Economic Growth, featuring research on workforce transformation and green innovation.
These aren’t generic tech conferences. They’re focused efforts to address specific challenges and develop solutions that will be presented at the main summit.
By the time global leaders arrive in New Delhi, there’s already a foundation of detailed technical work, policy proposals, and demonstrated use cases to build on.
Who’s Actually Coming? The Guest List Matters
The participation at this summit is genuinely unprecedented for an event hosted in the Global South:
UN Secretary-General António Guterres confirmed he’s attending. When the head of the United Nations shows up, it signals that this is being taken seriously as a forum for shaping global norms.
15-20 Heads of Government from diverse countries not just tech-forward nations, but countries from Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia that are thinking seriously about AI’s development impact.
Over 50 international ministers handling everything from technology to commerce to development to foreign affairs. AI touches all these domains, and the multi-sectoral participation reflects that.
South Korea’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyung-hoon is attending to present Korea’s AI capabilities and explore partnerships.
40+ global and Indian CEOs representing companies that are both building AI systems and deploying them at scale. This includes both Big Tech (though India has been notably careful about not letting them dominate the conversation) and emerging players from the Global South.
300+ exhibitors showcasing AI applications across 10+ thematic pavilions. This isn’t just theoretical it’s demonstrations of working systems.
The diversity of participation is the point. This isn’t just developed nations deciding AI policy and everyone else implementing it. This is actual multilateral cooperation where countries at different development stages, with different priorities, are working together.
The AI Expo: Where Theory Meets Reality
One of the most tangible parts of the summit is the India AI Impact Expo 300+ exhibitors across 10+ thematic pavilions showing what AI can actually do.
These pavilions are organized around real-world applications:
- Healthcare: AI diagnostics, drug discovery, telemedicine systems
- Agriculture: Precision farming, crop monitoring, climate adaptation
- Education: Personalized learning, multilingual content, accessible education
- Governance: Digital public services, efficient administration, citizen engagement
- Climate & Environment: Disaster prediction, resource optimization, sustainability tools
- Financial Inclusion: AI-powered banking for underserved populations
- Manufacturing: Smart factories, quality control, supply chain optimization
And more. The goal isn’t to showcase the most cutting-edge research. It’s to demonstrate solutions that work, that can scale, and that address real needs.
There’s a particular emphasis on solutions built for Indian contexts dealing with multilingual requirements, low connectivity environments, diverse literacy levels because these are the same challenges facing much of the Global South.
The Big Announcements You Should Watch For
Several major outputs are expected from the summit:
The Leaders’ Declaration
This is the formal document that emerges from high-level diplomatic negotiations. It will outline shared commitments, principles, and action plans for AI development and deployment.
Previous AI summits have produced declarations, but they’ve often been criticized as being heavy on aspirations and light on specifics. India is explicitly trying to produce something more concrete measurable commitments, timelines, and accountability mechanisms.
The AI Compendium
This is potentially the most useful output for practitioners. It’s a comprehensive collection of real-world AI use cases across priority sectors healthcare, agriculture, education, governance, climate, and more.
Set to be released on February 17, it’s intended as a reference resource that shows what’s actually working, what the challenges are, and how solutions can be adapted to different contexts.
Think of it as a playbook: if you’re a government minister in Kenya thinking about deploying AI for agricultural extension, you can look at what’s worked in India, Brazil, and Indonesia, understand the common patterns, and adapt approaches to your context.
Multilateral Action Plans
Each of the seven Chakras (working groups) is developing specific action plans with participation from multiple countries. These aren’t generic recommendations they’re concrete proposals for:
- Shared compute infrastructure that multiple countries can access
- Common datasets and models that can be built on
- Training programs that can be replicated across countries
- Standards and guidelines appropriate for diverse contexts
- Funding mechanisms for AI-for-good projects
New AI Infrastructure Announcements
India is expected to announce expansions to its AI compute infrastructure, partnerships for developing open-source models tailored to Indian languages and contexts, and commitments to make this infrastructure available to other Global South nations.
There’s also buzz about announcements related to Bharat-VISTAAR, a multilingual AI platform for agriculture that integrates existing agricultural databases with AI systems to provide location-specific advisories to farmers. This was proposed in India’s Union Budget 2026-2027.
What Makes India the Right Host for This Moment
There’s a reason this summit is happening in India specifically, and it goes beyond India’s growing tech sector.
The Diversity Advantage
India has 22 official languages, numerous scripts, hundreds of dialects, massive variations in literacy and digital access, diverse religious and cultural practices, and enormous economic disparity.
If you can build AI systems that work in India that are truly multilingual, accessible, and useful across this diversity you’ve built systems that can work almost anywhere in the developing world.
India isn’t hosting this summit despite its complexity. It’s hosting it because of that complexity.
The Digital Public Infrastructure Model
India has pioneered an approach to digital infrastructure called “India Stack” a set of APIs and digital public goods that include:
- Aadhaar: Digital identity for 1.3+ billion people
- UPI: Real-time payments system handling billions of transactions monthly
- DigiLocker: Secure document storage accessible to citizens
- CoWIN: Vaccine management platform used to administer 2+ billion COVID shots
This isn’t proprietary technology controlled by private companies. It’s public infrastructure that private companies can build on top of. India is applying this same philosophy to AI: build shared infrastructure, make it accessible, let innovation flourish on top.
Other countries are watching closely. If India can demonstrate that this model works for AI, it’s replicable.
The Scale of Impact
When India deploys a solution, it’s at massive scale immediately. 1.4 billion people. 700+ million internet users. A growing middle class combined with hundreds of millions still in poverty.
Any AI solution that works in India proves it can handle scale, diversity, and real-world messiness. That’s valuable validation for technology that other countries might want to adopt.
The Balancing Act
India occupies an interesting position geopolitically. It’s not aligned with China’s approach to AI (heavy state control, surveillance applications). It’s also not fully aligned with the US/EU approach (which India sees as sometimes prioritizing corporate interests or imposing frameworks that don’t fit developing country contexts).
India can credibly convene the Global South without seeming to be pushing a US or Chinese agenda. That neutrality matters for building genuine multilateral cooperation.
The “Democratizing AI Resources” Chakra: This Is the Game-Changer
Of all seven Chakras, this one might be the most important long-term. Let me explain why.
Right now, AI development is extraordinarily concentrated. A handful of companies (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, a few others) control the most advanced models. The vast majority of global compute for training large AI systems is concentrated in the US and China. The biggest datasets are held by Western tech companies.
For most of the world, this means you’re a consumer of AI, not a developer of AI. You use tools built elsewhere, trained on data that might not reflect your context, optimized for markets that aren’t yours.
The “Democratizing AI Resources” Chakra aims to change this through several mechanisms:
AI Commons: Shared compute infrastructure that multiple countries can access for training models.
Open Datasets: Creating and sharing datasets that reflect diverse languages, cultures, and contexts.
Model Hubs: Repositories of pre-trained models that can be fine-tuned for specific applications rather than training from scratch (which is prohibitively expensive).
Technical Assistance: Helping countries build their own AI capabilities rather than just buying foreign technology.
The argument is straightforward: if AI is going to be transformative, and if that transformation should benefit everyone, then everyone needs the ability to build AI solutions for their own contexts.
This is radical. It challenges the current model where AI capabilities are effectively a new form of technological dependency.
The Criticisms and Challenges Nobody’s Talking About (But Should)
Let’s be honest about the obstacles and legitimate concerns:
Can India Actually Deliver?
Hosting a summit is one thing. Implementing commitments is another. India has ambitious goals—building AI infrastructure, training thousands of scholars, deploying solutions at scale. Can the government actually execute on these promises, or will they get bogged down in bureaucracy?
Fair question. India’s track record is mixed. Digital infrastructure projects have often succeeded (Aadhaar, UPI). Some other initiatives have been slower. The fellowship program expansion is impressive, but actually delivering quality education to 13,500 students across diverse disciplines is a massive logistical challenge.
Is “Impact” Just Another Word for “Deployment”?
Critics note that by emphasizing “impact” over “safety,” India might be pushing for faster deployment without adequate safeguards. There’s tension between “let’s make AI work for people now” and “let’s make sure AI is safe before deploying it.”
India’s counter-argument is that developing countries can’t afford to wait decades while rich countries perfect AI safety. People are dying from preventable diseases, facing climate disasters, lacking access to education. They need solutions now, and those solutions can be deployed responsibly without waiting for perfect safety guarantees.
It’s a legitimate tension without an easy answer.
Will Big Tech Dominate Anyway?
Despite India’s emphasis on democratization and Global South cooperation, major tech companies have significant presence at the summit. Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others are all participating. They have resources that dwarf most governments’.
There’s a risk that for all the talk of democratization, the actual outcomes still reinforce existing power structures because the companies with the most advanced technology, largest datasets, and deepest pockets end up shaping what gets built and deployed.
India is aware of this tension. The emphasis on open-source models, public infrastructure, and multi-stakeholder governance is meant to create alternatives. But it’s an open question whether that’s enough to meaningfully shift power dynamics.
The China Question
China isn’t participating in a major way. That’s not surprising given geopolitical tensions, but it does mean that one of the world’s most advanced AI ecosystems and the country deploying AI at possibly the largest scale globally isn’t at the table for this “global” AI conversation.
This limits what can be achieved in terms of truly universal norms or standards.
What This Means for Different Stakeholders
For Developing Countries
This summit represents the first serious effort to center developing country needs in global AI governance. If it succeeds in producing concrete mechanisms for sharing compute, data, and models, it could genuinely democratize AI development.
The working group structure means you can engage directly in shaping outcomes, not just receive decisions made elsewhere.
For Startups and Innovators
The challenges (YUVAi, AI by HER, AI for All) provide pathways to visibility, funding, and partnerships that are typically hard to access. The expo showcases work to potential investors and government buyers.
If you’re building AI solutions for developing country contexts multilingual systems, low-connectivity environments, healthcare in resource-poor settings this is your moment to get noticed.
For Researchers and Academia
The fellowship program expansion and the emphasis on interdisciplinary AI research creates opportunities. The AI Compendium will be a valuable resource for understanding real-world AI applications and challenges.
The summit’s focus on measurable impact also helps address the “valley of death” between research and deployment—papers that never become solutions people actually use.
For Policymakers
This is where global AI norms for developing country contexts will be shaped. Western frameworks (EU AI Act, US approaches) have been criticized as not fitting developing country realities. The Leaders’ Declaration and working group outputs will provide alternative frameworks.
If you’re trying to figure out how to regulate AI in a way that promotes innovation and protects citizens without simply copying Western approaches, this summit is where those alternatives are being developed.
For Large Tech Companies
This summit is both an opportunity and a warning. Opportunity: demonstrate that you can be a partner in development, not just a seller of technology. Show that your systems can work in diverse, resource-constrained environments.
Warning: the Global South is organizing. If you don’t engage meaningfully with these concerns about democratization and equitable access, you might face coordinated pushback from a large block of countries.
The Bigger Picture: A Shift in Power Dynamics
Step back from the specific sessions and announcements, and what you’re witnessing is a fundamental shift in how global technology governance works.
For decades, the pattern has been: rich countries develop technology, set standards, and everyone else adopts or gets left behind. Sometimes developing countries would object, negotiate, try to modify things on the margins, but the basic dynamic remained.
This summit represents an attempt to flip that script. The Global South is saying: “We’re not just consumers of AI. We’re developers too. We have specific needs that aren’t being addressed. And we’re numerous enough and economically important enough that we can set our own agenda.”
Over 100 countries engaged in the working groups. Ministerial delegations from 45+ countries. That’s not a fringe movement. That’s a substantial portion of the world saying they want a different approach.
Will it work? That depends on whether the summit produces concrete, sustained outcomes rather than just inspiring declarations. But the attempt itself is significant.
The Five-Day Experience: What’s Actually Happening
The summit runs February 16-20, with different formats throughout:
Days 1-2 (Feb 16-17): High-level plenaries with heads of government, ministerial panels, launch of major initiatives like the AI Compendium. This is when the big announcements happen and media coverage peaks.
Day 3 (Feb 18): Deep-dive sessions organized by the seven Chakras. Working groups present their findings and recommendations. Technical workshops on specific applications. This is where substantive work gets done.
Day 4 (Feb 19): Main Summit Day formal proceedings, Leaders’ Declaration, final showcases from the global challenges, major partnership announcements.
Day 5 (Feb 20): Implementation planning, side events on specific topics, networking opportunities, wrap-up and commitments.
Throughout the five days, the AI Expo runs continuously giving attendees hands-on experience with actual AI systems and applications.
There are also 700+ sessions happening across various venues. You can filter by Chakra, by sector, by type of content. It’s genuinely overwhelming in scope.
The Legacy Question: Will This Matter in Five Years?
Here’s the honest truth: we won’t know for several years whether the India AI Impact Summit 2026 was a turning point or just another well-meaning international gathering that produced limited lasting change.
The factors that will determine success:
Follow-Through: Do the commitments made actually get implemented? Do countries follow up on working group recommendations? Does shared infrastructure actually materialize?
Funding: Many proposals require sustained investment. Will governments and organizations actually allocate resources, or will enthusiasm fade when it’s time to write checks?
Power Dynamics: Can the Global South maintain solidarity and coordination, or will countries get picked off one by one by larger powers offering bilateral deals?
Technology Evolution: AI is advancing rapidly. Will the frameworks developed at this summit remain relevant as capabilities change?
Political Will: Several key countries face elections in the next year or two. Will new leaders maintain their predecessors’ commitments?
That said, there are reasons for cautious optimism:
The fellowship program is real students are already being recruited. That creates a constituency with long-term investment in AI development.
The pre-summit events and working groups have already done substantial technical work. Even if the summit itself disappoints, that foundation exists.
India has staked significant political capital on this. Failure would be embarrassing on a global stage, creating incentives for serious implementation efforts.
The participation of UN leadership and involvement of multilateral organizations provides institutional continuity beyond any single country’s commitment.
How You Can Engage (Even If You’re Not at the Summit)
Not everyone can be in New Delhi, but the summit is designed for broader participation:
The AI Compendium will be publicly released a resource for understanding AI applications across sectors.
Working group reports and recommendations will be published, providing frameworks and approaches that organizations worldwide can adopt.
The fellowship portal (fellowship.indiaai.gov.in) is open for applications if you’re a student in any discipline interested in AI.
Summit sessions are being recorded and will be available online for those who couldn’t attend in person.
The challenges (YUVAi, AI by HER, AI for All) have already collected thousands of innovative solutions that will be documented and shared.
Side events and regional conferences will continue in coming months, bringing summit outcomes to different contexts and geographies.
Most importantly: the conversations started at this summit will continue. Working groups are meant to be ongoing, not just summit-specific. The question isn’t just “what happened at the summit” but “what happens next.”
The Bottom Line
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 is the most significant global AI gathering hosted in the developing world. Whether it represents a genuine shift in how AI development and governance happens, or just an inspiring but ultimately limited intervention, will depend on what comes after.
What’s undeniable: the conversation has shifted. For the first time, global AI policy is being shaped substantially by voices from countries that represent the majority of the world’s population. The emphasis is on impact what AI actually does for people rather than just theoretical frameworks.
The three Sutras (People, Planet, Progress) and seven Chakras (Human Capital, Inclusion, Safe & Trusted AI, Resilience, Science, Democratizing Resources, Social Good) provide a coherent framework for thinking about AI’s role in development.
The concrete initiatives fellowship programs, global challenges, shared infrastructure proposals, the AI Compendium move beyond rhetoric toward implementation.
And the participation 15-20 heads of government, 50+ ministers, UN leadership, 100+ countries in working groups demonstrates that this is being taken seriously as a forum that matters.
Five years from now, we’ll look back and assess whether this week in New Delhi was when AI development became genuinely global and inclusive, or whether it was a noble but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to challenge existing power structures.
For now, the attempt itself is worth watching, worth learning from, and worth engaging with.
Because if we’re going to build AI that truly serves humanity, protects the planet, and advances shared prosperity not just AI that makes rich countries richer then this is what that effort looks like.
Messy, ambitious, imperfect, but genuine.
And that’s something worth celebrating, even as we remain realistic about the challenges ahead.
The Global South has a seat at the table. Now comes the harder part: ensuring that seat translates into actual power, actual resources, and actual influence over AI’s trajectory.
That’s the work that begins this week in New Delhi. The summit is just the beginning.
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