India AI Impact Summit 2026

Syllabus: GS3/Science and Technology

Context

• The India AI Impact Summit 2026 concluded in New Delhi recently.

Background of AI Summits

• 2023 Bletchley Park Summit (UK): The first global AI summit was held at Bletchley Park and focused on safety. It brought together countries and experts to discuss AI risks and resulted in the Bletchley Declaration.
• 2024 Seoul Summit (South Korea): The second summit was held in Seoul in May 2024, building on the discussions from the Bletchley Park meeting and broadening to include innovation and inclusivity alongside safety.
• 2025 AI Action Summit (Paris, France): In February 2025, the AI Action Summit took place at the Grand Palais in Paris. It was co-chaired by France and India and followed the earlier Bletchley Park and Seoul events.
• 2026 India AI Impact Summit (New Delhi): This is the next major summit in the series, held in India in February 2026.

India–AI Impact Summit 2026

• Hosted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
• The India–AI Impact Summit 2026, was announced by the PM at the France AI Action Summit and it will be the first-ever global AI summit hosted in the Global South.
• It will strengthen existing multilateral initiatives while advancing new priorities, deliverables, and cooperative frameworks.
• The Three Sutras: Three foundational pillars, known as ‘Sutras’ i.e. People, Planet and Progress, define how AI can be harnessed through multilateral cooperation for collective benefit.

India-hosted Summit Goals

• AI’s capabilities must be available to as many people as possible; 
  • more work must be done to make it relevant in the Global South, such as by expanding representation for languages that have been under-represented in the training of western LLMs (large language models); 
  • and that the technology should be “safe and trusted”.
• On the domestic front, the government sought to project India as an attractive destination for AI infrastructure and research, and for encouraging the technology’s adoption in India. 

Outcomes of the summit

• Wide Participation: The summit attracted over five lakh visitors, a record that easily surpassed the attendance of the G20 summit in 2023.
  • The event also hosted over 500 individual discussions, with speakers from around the world. 
• Investments: The government also mentioned $250 billion in investment commitments, as well as $20 billion in commitments for frontier deep tech research. 
• Delhi Declaration: India also achieved broad consensus among 88 countries and international organisations for the New Delhi Declaration on AI.
  • It was signed by the U.S., China, France, and several other countries who are key for the development and deployment of AI at present.
  • Nearly all commitments are described in the statement as “voluntary” and “non-binding,” encouraging wider participation. 
  • These include a charter for the “democratic diffusion” of AI; a “Global AI Impact Commons,” which would serve as a database of use cases for countries to draw inspiration from; a “Trusted AI Commons,” described as a “repository of tools, benchmarks, and best practices; an “International Network of AI for Science Institutions” which would link technical institutes around the world.
• India Joined Pax Silica: During the summit, India joined the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative, which seeks to build a network of like-minded countries opposed to concentration of power in electronics manufacturing and critical minerals. 

• Sarvam AI: The event saw the long-anticipated launch of India’s first domestically trained multi-billion parameter LLMs by Sarvam AI. 
• Investment commitments: 
  • Reliance Industries Ltd. announced commitments of ₹10 lakh crore in domestic AI, only slightly more than the Adani Group’s similar commitment. 
  • Google gave 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. 

Conclusion

• The summit is expected to catalyse long-term international partnerships and position AI as a key driver of economic growth.
• The government mentioned there was “broad-based global consensus on leveraging AI for economic growth and social good”.

Source: TH