What does the boom of artificial intelligence (AI) mean for the future of work? Is India’s IT sector ready for the onslaught? Should India build its own Large Language Models, similar to the likes of ChatGPT and DeepSeek, or focus more on tailored, sector-specific AI applications? Are most Indians skilled enough for an AI-first world? Will AI be detrimental to the environment, with its requirement of large amounts of data that must be stored in data centres?
As the world faces fundamental questions, spurred by the sensational growth in AI services, much of the global conversation around them will happen in India over the next five days, with New Delhi playing host for the India-AI Impact Summit 2026. Between February 16 and 20, several world and corporate leaders will try to answer the burning questions facing the world today.
With the summit, India intends to generate actionable recommendations that contribute to long-term AI innovation and governance objectives rather than framing immediate binding regulations.
India, an aspiring voice for Global South
Coming to the Global South for the first time, the summit represents the latest chapter in an evolving international conversation on AI. 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 (which Prime Minister Narendra Modi co-chaired) emphasised practical implementation and economic opportunities, though issues of safety and security were largely sidestepped.
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. The approach reflects India’s position both as an aspiring AI power and a voice for the Global South.
According to Abhishek Singh, CEO of IndiaAI Mission, one of the focus areas would be the democratisation of AI, apart from showcasing real-world AI solutions that Indian engineers and talent are building locally.
“The AI that we are using presently is such that it’s developed in and by a few countries and the majority of the world is just AI users. If the datasets are not inclusive, bias will be there in the outputs. The issue with regard to democratising AI resources in the form of datasets of compute, models, algorithms and applications becomes a key theme for the summit,” Singh told The Indian Express.
What to expect from the AI Summit
Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has billed the summit as the biggest one so far, and had last month said the government has received a 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 — such as French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — over 50 ministers from various countries, and more than 40 CEOs of leading global and Indian companies, such as Google’s Sundar Pichai Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Microsoft’s Brad Smit, and Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen.
PM Modi will inaugurate the event, and is also likely to host a dinner and address a CEO roundtable. A Chinese delegation is also attending after India sent a formal invitation to Beijing.
The event will culminate on Friday, with the adoption of a declaration statement. New Delhi may have to be careful in its language as the US and UK declined to sign the declaration at the summit in France last year, due to concerns over Europe’s regulatory approach to AI.
There has already been a minor dampener to the event, with Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang cancelling his India visit and pulling out of the summit at the last minute due to “unforeseen circumstances”. Huang, whose company and the graphics processing units that it designs are at the heart of the AI revolution, was among the biggest summit attractions.
India is also likely to see some companies launch domestically developed AI language models. Of the 12 applications to build Large and Small Language Models that India has approved, some are expected to see official launches. This includes sovereign AI models being built by Sarvam AI and BharatGen. There could also be some hardware-related announcements, centred around expanding India’s data centre capacity.
The event will include deliberations on multiple themes, with working groups for AI and its impact on work, trust and safety protocols for AI models, and the usage of AI in specific industries.
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, it said in a press statement.
Key sessions at the 2026 AI Impact Summit in New Delhi
The summit will host over 500 sessions spread across venues like Bharat Mandapam and Sushma Swaraj Bhawan. Here are some notable events:
Inside India’s frontier lab and its global south impact
When: Feb 16 (9:30 AM – 10:30 AM); Where: L1 Meeting Room No. 6, Bharat Mandapam
Speakers:
- Sahil Arora, Qualcomm
- Sunil Gupta, Yotta Data Services
- Abhishek Upperwal, Soket AI
- Rangarajan V, Adani Defence & Aerospace
- Joseph Joshy, International Financial Services Centres Authority
- Mayank Singh, IIT Gandhinagar
The future of employability in the age of AI
When: Feb 16 (9:30 AM – 10:30 AM); Where: West Wing Room 4 A, Bharat Mandapam
Speakers:
- V Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor, India
- Sanjeev Bhikchandani, InfoEdge
- Anurag Mairal, Stanford University of Medicine
- Shashi Shekhar Vempati, AI4India
India’s AI infrastructure: From vision to reality
When: Feb 16 (12:30 PM – 1:30 PM); Where: L1 Meeting Room No. 17, Bharat Mandapam
Speakers:
- Kishore Balaji, IBM
- Ranganath Sadasiva, HP Enterprises
- Sumit Monga, Lenovo Group
- Dipakshi Mehandru, Intel Corporation
- Tarandeep Bagga, Cisco
- Vibha Mehra, Nokia
- Amrit Jiwan, Canon India
Building India’s AI governance architecture: From frameworks to implementation
When: Feb 17 (3.30 PM – 4.30 PM); Where: Meeting room 19, Bharat Mandapam
Speakers:
- Abhishek Singh, Additional Secretary, IT Ministry; CEO, IndiaAI Mission
- Amitabh Kant, Chairperson, Fairfax Centre for Free Enterprises; ex-G20 Sherpa; former CEO, NITI Aayog
- Vivek Raghavan, Sarvam AI
- Gaurav Aggarwal, chief AI scientist, Reliance Jio
Hugo Valadares, Director of Science, Technology and Innovation, Government of Brazil
Ramesh Bhaskar, MIT Media Labs
- Amandeep Gill, USG and Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies, United Nations
Democratising compute through regional infrastructure
When: Feb 18 (1:30 PM – 2:30 PM); Where: L1 Meeting Room No. 6, Bharat Mandapam
Speakers:
- Anne Robinson, IBM
- Durga Malladi, Qualcomm
- Ipsita Dasgupta, HP India
- Magnus Ewerbring, Ericsson
- Srikanth Cherukuri, Nvidia
Fireside chat
When: Feb 19 (12:04 PM – 12:24 PM); Where: L3 Plenary Hall, Bharat Mandapam
Speakers:
- Dario Amodei, CEO, Anthropic
- Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder and Chairman, Infosys
Building AI readiness: From compute to capability
When: Feb 20 (9:30 AM – 10:30 AM); Where: West Wing Room 4 A, Bharat Mandapam
Speakers:
- Thomas Zacharia, SVP at AMD
- Timothy Robson, AI business development director, AMD
- Paneerselvam M, IT Ministry
AI for economic development and social Good
When: Feb 20 (9:30 AM – 10:30 AM); Where: L1 Meeting Room No. 7, Bharat Mandapam
Speakers:
- Ashwini Vaishnaw, IT, I&B, Railways Minister
- Anshuman Awasthi, Mercedes-Benz Research & Development India
- Karsten Wildberger, Federal Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation, Germany
- Dattatri Salagame, Bosch Global Software Technologies
- Sindhu Gangadharan, SAP Labs India
Accelerating India’s AI growth – A blueprint for India’s AI success
When: Feb 20 (9:30 AM – 10:30 AM); Where: L1 Meeting Room No. 6, Bharat Mandapam
Speakers:
- Jayant Chaudhary, MoS (Independent Charge) Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, MoS, Ministry of Education
- Manish Gupta, President and MD, Dell Technologies India
- Rajiv Memani, Chairman and CEO, EY India
- Rishi Bal, CEO, BharatGen
- Vivek Mohindra, Special Advisor to Vice Chair & COO, Dell Technologies
- Rajgopal A S, MD and CEO, NxtGen Cloud Technologies
Responsible AI in action: How global enterprises are building trust at scale
When: Feb 20 (10:30 AM – 11:30 AM); Where: L1 Meeting Room No. 6, Bharat Mandapam
Speakers:
- Manish Gupta, Google DeepMind
- Sundar R Nagalingam, NVIDIA
- Sunil Abraham, Meta
- Geeta Gurnani, IBM
Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, the venue for the AI Summit that begins on February 16. (Express photo by Abhinav Saha) 
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