India AI Impact Summit 2026

India AI Impact Summit 2026

Why in News? 

India is fully set to host the India AI Impact Summit 2026, a major global artificial intelligence event in New Delhi from February 16–20, 2026, bringing world tech leaders, policymakers, and innovators together to shape AI’s future and impact. French President Emmanuel Macron will visit India to attend this summit.

Highlights of India AI Impact Summit 2026

• About: The India AI Impact Summit 2026 is a pivotal global summit on artificial intelligence, scheduled to be held from 16–20 February 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, India. It represents the first international AI summit hosted in the Global South.

• Hosted by: It is organised by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) under the IndiaAI Mission to spotlight inclusive, responsible, impact-oriented AI development.

• Objectives: The Summit aims to shift the global conversation on AI from abstract debates to “impact-first” outcomes, emphasising how AI can advance inclusive growth, sustainable development, and public service delivery.

• Logo: The official logo features the Ashoka Chakra at its centre, symbolising ethical governance, justice, and India’s constitutional values, with neural network flares radiating outward to show AI’s transformative impact across sectors and geographies. 

• Sutras: The agenda is framed around three foundational pillars (Sutras):

• • 1. People (AI for human welfare and dignity),
    2. Planet (AI aligned with environmental sustainability), and
    3. Progress (equitable access to AI’s benefits).

• Seven Chakras: These chakras translate the Summit’s broader vision into focused areas of global cooperation.

• • 1. Human Capital: Focuses on preparing people for an AI-driven future of work through skilling, reskilling, workforce transitions, and equitable access to opportunities in the AI economy. 
    2. Inclusion for Social Empowerment: Ensures AI systems are inclusive by design, accessible to underserved and diverse populations, and capable of improving delivery of essential services, thus promoting social equity and empowerment. 
    3. Safe and Trusted AI: Addresses governance, ethics, transparency, accountability, safety, and risk management of AI systems. This chakra focuses on building trustworthy and interoperable AI governance frameworks.
    4. Resilience, Innovation and Efficiency: Explores AI’s role in creating sustainable, resource-efficient, resilient systems, including in public infrastructure, disaster response and administration, while also addressing environmental challenges associated with large-scale AI deployment.
    5. Science: Highlights the use of AI to accelerate scientific discovery and research collaboration globally. It supports inclusive research ecosystems — especially in the Global South — to expand AI’s contributions in areas like climate modeling, health, and agriculture.
    6. Democratising AI Resources: Promotes equitable access to AI foundational tools such as datasets, compute, models, and infrastructure. The goal is to enable inclusive innovation by making critical AI enablers affordable and available worldwide. 
    7. AI for Economic Growth and Social Good: Focuses on using AI to drive productivity, competitiveness, and development in key sectors like healthcare, agriculture, education and justice. It prioritises scalable, high-impact AI solutions that amplify economic growth.

• Participation: The Summit has drawn over 35,000 registrations from more than 100 countries, making it one of the largest global AI gatherings in history. 

• It is expected to feature around 500 sessions, a startup showcase with more than 500 AI startups.

• High-level participation includes 15+ Heads of State and Government, more than 50 international ministers, and 100+ global Chief Executive Officers and technology leaders. 

• • 1. The summit will be attended by top global tech leaders such as Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang.
    2. French President Emmanuel Macron will visit India to attend this summit from 17–19 February 2026, strengthening India-France partnership in AI and innovation.

• Indigenous Foundational Model Projects: The Government has launched eight key indigenous AI foundational model projects:

• 1. Avatar AI – Builds specialised AI Avatars (up to 70B parameters) optimised for Indian languages and key sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, and governance.
  2. IIT Bombay Consortium – Bharat Gen – Developing multilingual and multimodal AI models (2B–1T parameters) with open-source access for agriculture, finance, legal, health, and education uses.
  3. Fractal Analytics Ltd. Model – India’s first large reasoning AI model (up to 70B parameters) designed for structured reasoning, STEM, and medical problem-solving.
  4. Tech Mahindra Maker’s Lab – Hindi-Focused Model – A 8B parameter Indic language model focused on Hindi dialects and an agentic AI platform (Orion) for government applications.
  5. Zenteiq – BrahmAI – A science-driven multimodal foundation model (8B–80B parameters) to boost engineering intelligence, scientific computing, and industrial innovation.
  6. GenLoop’s Language Series – Small language models (2B parameters) — Yukti, Varta, Kavach — supporting all 22 scheduled Indian languages with native reasoning and moderation.
  7. Intellihealth Model – A 20B parameter AI model for EEG signal analysis enabling early neurological disorder screening and advancing brain–computer interface research.
  8. Shodh AI Model – A 7B parameter model to accelerate materials discovery, integrating AI into experimental research workflows in material sciences.

Strategic Importance of India AI Impact Summit 2026

• Strategic Leadership in Global Governance: India is positioning itself as a central convenor by moving international conversation toward implementation and capacity-building. By chairing the GPAI Council and engaging over 100 countries, India aims to build a global consensus on responsible AI that balances innovation with democratic values. This role is further amplified by India’s 2026 BRICS Presidency, allowing it to steer a “third way” alternative to US and Chinese AI monopolies. 
• Digital Diplomacy and the Global South: The summit leverages Digital Diplomacy to amplify the voice of emerging economies. Through the “Seven Chakras” framework, India facilitates multilateral cooperation on critical issues like Democratizing AI Resources—a working group co-chaired with Kenya and Egypt to make compute and data global public goods. This collective approach aims to bridge the “AI divide” by providing affordable infrastructure to the Global South. 
• Shaping International Rules and Standards: India is actively shaping international norms through a balanced techno-legal approach to regulation. The establishment of the IndiaAI Safety Institute highlights a commitment to translating high-level principles into interoperable safety frameworks. By launching over 200 sector-specific AI models and documenting them in a Global AI Compendium, India provides a practical roadmap for governance in healthcare, agriculture, and ethics. 
• Multilateral Cooperation and Public Good: The summit anchors multilateral efforts on three foundational “Sutras”: People, Planet, and Progress. It fosters partnerships among governments, Big Tech (Nvidia, Microsoft, Google), and startups to scale AI for social empowerment. Flagship challenges like AI for ALL and AI by HER demonstrate a collaborative model where global innovations are scaled to solve population-level problems. 

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