SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure | SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology | NITI Aayog
India is set to host the India–AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, from 16 to 20 February 2026, marking the first global AI summit organized by a country in the Global South. Anchored in the foundatonal principles of ‘People, Planet and Progress’, the five-day summit will serve as a platform for global leaders and innovators to translate AI discussions into tangible development outcomes. A central feature of the summit's agenda is the AI Global Impact Challenges, such as 'AI for ALL' and 'AI by HER', which aim to identify and award large-scale, indigenous AI solutions with prizes of up to INR 2.50 crore. The event will also feature an AI Impact Expo and the release of an AI Compendium documenting real-world applications across priority sectors like healthcare and governance.
Foundational Pillars: Three Sutras and Seven Chakras
The summit’s deliberations are structured around seven ‘Chakras’ of multilateral cooperation:
Human Capital: Focusing on an equitable AI reskilling ecosystem to strengthen workforce readiness.
Inclusion for Social Empowerment: Enabling last-mile service delivery through scalable, citizen-centric AI models.
Safe and Trusted AI: Translating global principles into practical, interoperable safety and governance frameworks.
Resilience, Innovation and Efficiency: Addressing environmental and resource challenges of large-scale AI.
Science: Accelerating discovery by correcting inequities in access to data and compute resources.
Democratizing AI Resources: Ensuring affordable access to foundational enablers for startups and public institutions.
AI for Economic Growth & Social Good: Supporting high-impact use cases for truly inclusive growth.
Policy Relevance
The summit signifies India’s transition from a participant in global AI dialogues to a leader in setting the development-first AI agenda for emerging economies.
Strategic Impact:
Advancing ‘Viksit Bharat’: AI integration into public service delivery is a key prerequisite for achieving the vision of a developed nation by 2047.
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) 2.0: Strengthening AI within DPI platforms ensures data-driven, real-time decision-making in governance and judiciary.
Technological Self-Reliance: By emphasizing domestic compute infrastructure and regional-language tools like Mossum GPT, India reduces reliance on external AI value chains.
Regional AI Benchmarking: Deliberations from eight regional conferences (Oct 2025 – Jan 2026) ensure that the national policy captures specific sub-national capacity gaps and use cases.
Relevant Question for Policy Stakeholders: How can the Ministry of Electronics and IT leverage the ‘Research Symposium’ partners to create a pan-India ‘AI Knowledge Repository’ that archives open-source models for use by tier-2 and tier-3 city municipal bodies?
Follow the full news here: Global South AI Summit: 'India-AI Impact 2026'