Last week, India hosted its flagship AI Impact Summit 2026, a global event held at the Bharat Mandapam Convention Centre (the same venue as the G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration), which hosted delegates from over 100 nations, including heads of government, 500 top AI leaders from 118 countries and key figures shaping the AI century: Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, among others. The Summit marked the first major global artificial intelligence convening hosted by a nation of the Global South.
The Summit covered everything from philosophy to scale, with major commitments from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Indian conglomerates fueling a projected $250 billion AI ecosystem. Leading tech firms showcased cutting-edge AI products and solutions at a large-scale expo.
ai fray attended the Summit, and has broken down some of the key highlights from the Inauguration Day, held on February 19, 2026:
PM Modi: global collaboration necessary to manage AI risks
On day one of the Summit, “Inauguration Day”, heads of State, global technology titans, and multilateral organizations converged to move beyond theoretical safety debates toward a focus on actionable, inclusive development. Under the theme of Sarvajana Hitaya, Sarvajana Sukhaya (Welfare for All, Happiness for All), the inauguration set the stage for a new global consensus seeking to bridge the widening chasm between innovation and equitable impact.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi began with an opening address, speaking to an audience that included French President Emmanuel Macron and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. A significant portion of Prime Minister Modi’s address was dedicated to the unveiling of the M.A.N.A.V. vision: a strategic and philosophical framework designed to ensure that AI serves as a societal multiplier rather than a tool for polarization or monopoly. The acronym, which translates to “Human” in several Indian languages, outlines the core principles of India’s AI strategy.
The Indian Prime Minister’s address also touched upon the necessity of global collaboration to manage the risks of AI. He noted that while technological turning points set the direction of civilization, they must be guided by a collective conscience.
The global alliance
French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a keynote next, underscoring the burgeoning “deep-tech diplomacy” between Paris and New Delhi. President Macron’s presence followed the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, establishing a lineage of cooperation aimed at preventing the fragmentation of the global AI ecosystem.
President Macron emphasized that the future of AI belongs to those who “combine technology with humanity”. He highlighted India’s deliberate choice to support Small Language Models (SLMs) that can run on smartphones, making technology accessible to the grassroots rather than just the elite. He concluded by asserting that the bilateral relationship between India and France is at its “highest point”, with AI becoming the new frontier for their strategic partnership.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres brought the perspective of the broader international community. His remarks were centered on the “governance gap”, the disparity between the speed of AI innovation and the pace of regulatory oversight. He warned that the future of AI “cannot be decided by a handful of countries, or left to the whims of a few billionaires”. He officially announced the appointment of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, a 40-member body of global experts intended to serve as a scientific baseline for global dialogue.
Guterres stressed that $3 billion for the Global Fund is a “small price for AI diffusion” that would prevent nations from being “logged out of the AI age”. He emphasized that if done correctly, AI could accelerate progress on 80% of the Sustainable Development Goals, from food security to climate action. However, he cautioned that without meaningful human oversight, AI could deepen inequality and amplify existing biases.
CEO Roundtable and the $250 Billion Infrastructure Wave
The afternoon of Inauguration Day transitioned from philosophical frameworks to the industrial reality of AI deployment during the high-level CEO Roundtable, chaired by Prime Minister Modi. The CEOs of Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and NVIDIA participated in the roundtable.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai urged companies to pursue AI “boldly and responsibly”, announcing that Google is establishing a full-stack AI hub in India as part of a $15 billion long-term commitment. He noted that AI can “improve billions of lives and solve some of the hardest problems in science”, while cautioning that “the best outcomes of AI are not guaranteed”.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, identified India as one of the world’s most critical markets for AI adoption. “India will have a huge amount of influence,” Mr. Altman stated, while addressing concerns about the labor market by noting that “[OpenAI] always finds new things to do, and [he has] no doubt [it] will find lots of better ones this time”. OpenAI notably solidified its local presence by partnering with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to anchor its first 100MW AI infrastructure project in the region (February 19, 2026 Tata Group press release).
Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries, framed AI as the “next big infrastructure of intelligence,” comparable to electricity. Mr. Ambani announced three bold initiatives: constructing gigawatt-scale AI-ready data centers, leveraging India’s 10-gigawatt green energy surplus to power them, and deploying a nationwide edge compute layer to bring AI to the remotest parts of the country.
A pivotal outcome of the inauguration day was the formal signing of the “New Delhi Frontier AI Impact Commitments”. This voluntary framework, signed by leading international and domestic companies, including Google, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Anthropic, and Indian startups like Sarvam AI and BharatGen, marks a shift toward “democratized” AI governance.
Geopolitical Equilibrium: The New Delhi Declaration on AI Impact
The most significant diplomatic achievement of the Inauguration Day was the adoption of the New Delhi Declaration on AI Impact, endorsed by 88 countries and international organizations, including major global powers like the U.S., China, the EU, Russia, Japan, and the UK. Michael Kratsios, representing the U.S. delegation, also introduced the “American AI Exports Program” and the “National Champions Initiative”.
Tech players: infrastructure, trust, inclusion at scale
Several other global leaders and industry heads used the Inaugural Day to move the conversation beyond aspiration and into structural reality.
Olivier Blum, CEO of Schneider Electric, focused on energy as the hidden bottleneck. “AI means more compute. More compute means more energy,” he said, warning that hyperscale data centers and AI training clusters are already straining grids in the U.S. and Europe. Referencing global climate commitments, he argued that AI must not only consume energy but also optimize it through predictive grid management and demand-side efficiency.
Martin Schroeter, CEO of Kyndryl, shifted attention to execution. “75% of innovation efforts stall after proof of concept,” he noted, pointing to the gap between demos and deployment. In mission-critical systems such as airports, hospitals, and energy grids, reliability and governance are non-negotiable. Trust, he argued, must be engineered into systems through embedded accountability and operational oversight.
Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, framed the debate as speed versus trust. As AI systems become autonomous agents, questions of liability, security, and sovereignty intensify. February. He warned about adversarial AI, agent hijacking, and malicious code generation, emphasizing that governance alone is insufficient; security must be built into AI architecture from the start.
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla brought the focus to inclusion: “Unless AI benefits the bottom half of the population, we will not see real impact.” He highlighted scalable AI tutors, AI-driven medical systems, and voice-based agronomy tools as practical models for expanding access in education, healthcare, and agriculture. For an international audience, this reframed AI not as elite automation but as mass capability expansion.
According to Roy Jakobs, CEO of Philips, “AI will have its greatest impact in healthcare, because healthcare needs it.” Facing rising demand, workforce shortages, and chronic disease burdens, healthcare systems are under pressure to adopt AI-driven efficiency. He emphasized that the first wave of AI is not about replacing clinicians but about giving them back time, automating documentation, prioritizing urgent cases, and reducing workflow friction. He highlighted autonomous MRI systems, helium-free imaging technology, and AI-enabled smart hospital environments that detect patient deterioration early under human oversight.
Major investments surge
The Inaugural Day quickly turned into a high-stakes investment showcase. U.S. tech giants reaffirmed massive long-term bets on India’s AI infrastructure: Microsoft confirmed plans to invest approximately $17.5 billion over four years in cloud and AI infrastructure, while Google had already committed around $15 billion over five years for digital and AI infrastructure, and Amazon pledged $35 billion by 2030 to expand AI and cloud capacity in India.