Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to inaugurate the India AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, where French President Emmanuel Macron, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and other global leaders are in attendance.
The five-day summit, described by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw as the “first AI summit in the Global South and the biggest AI summit so far”, has drawn participation from 118 countries.
Leaders call for democratised, inclusive AI
Welcoming delegates, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said, “Welcome to the first AI summit in the global south and the biggest AI summit so far. We have participation from 118 countries. Thank you all for making this summit a grand success.”
He added that Prime Minister Modi believes “the true value of technology lies in ensuring that its benefits reach the masses.”
“Our Prime Minister’s vision is to democratise technology, deploy it at scale, make it accessible to all,” Vaishnaw said.
The summit is anchored around three core pillars – People, Planet and Progress – and is aimed at translating global AI deliberations into actionable outcomes under the IndiaAI Mission and Digital India initiative.
India as an ‘AI optimist’ nation
Speaking at the summit, Tata Group Chairman N Chandrasekaran described India as “a nation of AI optimists”.
“It is an extraordinary privilege to be here this morning and participate in this AI Summit. India is a nation of AI optimists. Our enthusiasm is not surprising,” he said.
Chandrasekaran pointed to India’s digital public infrastructure as proof of the country’s readiness for large-scale AI deployment. “Indians have witnessed the hugely ambitious digital infrastructure programs and what they can achieve – the largest digital identity system in the world, covering 1.4 billion people. A digital payment interface that accounts for half of the entire world’s transactions,” he said.
He added that under the Prime Minister’s vision, India has treated AI as a strategic national capability. “Over the past few years, India has aligned the full stack from chips to systems to energy to applications,” he said, referring to initiatives such as Semicon India and the IndiaAI Mission.
Compute as a public good
Highlighting India’s infrastructure push, Vaishnaw said the government was treating compute capacity as a public good.
“In a public-private partnership, we have created a common compute platform where we are providing access to 38,000 GPUs at a very affordable rate for our startups, academia, researchers and students. We will be adding another 20,000 GPUs to this common compute platform,” he said.
The government’s approach, he said, aims to ensure AI growth is “trusted, resilient and competitive in the long term.”
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 marks one of the largest global gatherings on artificial intelligence hosted in the Global South, positioning India as a central player in shaping inclusive and scalable AI frameworks.