India will this week become the nerve centre of the world’s most consequential conversation on artificial intelligence, as the five-day India AI Impact Summit 2026 opens tomorrow in the capital. Billed as the first international AI summit ever hosted in the Global South, the mega event signals India’s determination to be seen as a defining force in shaping the future of technology, even as the nature of that technology changes, literally, every hour.Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the India AI Impact Expo. No fewer than 20 heads/representatives of states are expected to attend, along with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Tech luminaries like Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and Microsoft’s Brad Smith are showing up.The summit comes at a time when AI is transforming economies and governance worldwide, powering advances in healthcare, agriculture and finance. Yet it raises concerns around jobs, privacy, bias and misinformation, making global cooperation, regulation and ethical deployment critical as nations compete for technological leadership.For India, AI presents opportunities to scale public services and drive innovation, but challenges persist, including digital divides, compute capacity, skilling gaps, multilingual data needs and funding constraints. Ensuring inclusive, affordable and responsibly governed deployment remains central to its strategy.A powerhouse American industry delegation, co-led by Adobe Chairman and CEO Shantanu Narayen and FedEx President and CEO Raj Subramaniam, will include more than 120 senior executives from over 100 companies. The US government will be represented by White House science adviser Michael Kratsios.The expo, a centrepiece of the summit, will feature more than 300 exhibitors across thematic pavilions covering healthcare, agriculture, education, governance, climate and smart manufacturing — besides, 600 high-potential startups, many of them building globally relevant and population-scale solutions.Envisioned as one of the largest events on AI for public good, world leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as well as those from smaller nations like Bhutan, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Kazakhstan, Spain, Switzerland, the UAE will attend.Modi and Macron are scheduled to jointly address the gathering on February 19.Over 500 sessions will be organised, featuring more than 3,250 visionary speakers and panel members. These sessions will focus on acknowledging the transformative impact of AI across sectors and deliberating on future actions to ensure that AI benefits every global citizen.The summit is expected to yield a mix of policy, investment and innovation outcomes aimed at accelerating India’s leadership in emerging technologies. Key deliverables include the unveiling of India’s AI Governance Guidelines, new global partnerships, research collaborations and innovation alliances.Investment announcements across compute infrastructure, startups and skilling ecosystems are also anticipated. The event will further catalyse public-sector AI deployments, sectoral pilot projects and digital public infrastructure integrations, while shaping global consensus on responsible, inclusive and safe development of artificial intelligence — particularly from a Global South perspective.
