India recently hosted the AI Summit from 16 to 20 February 2026. This was the fourth and the largest in a series of AI summits that began in the United Kingdom in 2023. The inaugural summit in the United Kingdom in 2023, followed by the second summit in Seoul, South Korea, in 2024, primarily focused on AI safety. The third summit, held in Paris, France, in 2025, centred on innovation, while the 2026 summit in India emphasised impact and a human-centric approach towards AI. Based on the principles of People, Planet, and Progress, the summit brought together over 250,000 registered attendees, representatives of over 100 countries, and world leaders like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Emmanuel Macron of France and Pedro Sánchez of Spain.  It also convened prominent figures from the technology sector, including Sundar Pichai of Google, Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Sam Altman of OpenAI, reflecting an optic to position India at the intersection of global governance, technological development and market-driven innovation. Amidst criticism coming from technology experts about the summit being more of a spectacle than any significant promises, and chaotic event management. The event appeared to offer limited concrete commitments in terms of research breakthroughs, regulatory clarity, or technological infrastructure. Even though the summit delivered too little in terms of immediate innovation outcomes, it showed significant strategic strength in three main areas – demographic scale, market expansion and status symbolisation.

First, India is leveraging its demographic scale. In his inaugural address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described Indian youth as the largest talent pool in the world and framed the summit as a turning point for AI research in terms of its scale and trajectory. India has one of the world’s largest populations of digitally connected users, along with a rapidly expanding technology-led workforce. This has created a human infrastructure that few countries can match. According to a recent report published by Anthropic Research, India has the fastest-growing number of AI users in the world.  This usage and integration of AI has led to a 15x speedup in productivity among Indian users. According to the Microsoft and LinkedIn 2024 Work Trend Index, 92 per cent of Indian workers report using AI or its integration in the workplace. This advantage lies not only in the population size but also in the growing integration of digital technologies into everyday life,  usage of smartphones,  affordable high-speed internet and the Indian government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI)- a digital payment system.  A  2025 study by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that the UPI system is connected with more than 500 million users and completes over 20 billion transactions each month. A young population with increasing exposure to technical resources and participation in the global services economy has positioned India as a strategic player for data generation, model training environments and large-scale deployment. India’s demographic strength enables it to shape AI ecosystems through labour-intensive usage and participation at scale.

India is capitalising on its large market scale. The UPI Interface is connected with more than 500 million users and 65 million merchants, accounting for 84 per cent of payments in the retail sector of the country.  India’s vast and rapidly expanding consumer base provides an assessment for AI deployment at a substantial scale, making it attractive for global technology companies looking for growth and scope. This creates a strong influence embedded in human capital and digital adoption, making the country an attractive partner for global companies. In December 2025, it was announced that Microsoft had pledged an investment of US$17.5 billion to expand cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in the country, while Amazon plans to invest over US$35 billion by 2030, and Google plans to invest US$15 billion towards AI data centres and digital connectivity.  The 2026 AI Summit pitched India’s position as a ‘testing ground’ for the deployment of AI technologies at a large scale.  For global technologies and AI companies, the country offers not only a large demographic size but also an ecosystem where tools can be deployed and iterated in everyday use on a large scale. The country’s diverse income levels, widespread English usage and uneven access conditions allow technologies to be tested across different environments ranging from urban digital ecosystems to semi-connected rural markets. This creates opportunities not only for large-scale consumption but also for the iterative adaptation of AI systems in sectors such as finance, healthcare, agriculture and governance.

Although India’s role remains more of an application and deployment partner than a global innovator. There is a growing ecosystem of Indian firms, such as Sarvam AI and Krutrim, which are working on foundational models and India-focused AI infrastructure, alongside Haptik and Fractal Analytics in enterprise applications; Arya.ai and Perfios in financial intelligence; Niramai and SigTuple in healthcare diagnostics, KissanAI in agriculture, Locus and Minus Zero in logistics and mobility, and Tata Elxsi and Ksolves in applied industry solutions, which reflect the emergence of a wide-ranging domestic AI ecosystem and significance. However, their scale, global competitiveness and long-term technological impact are still evolving. An important debate here arises is whether countries like the United States and China, which lead in AI innovation, will continue to shape the direction of technological power, while other developing countries will still be consumers. In this regard, India’s own positioning as a large-scale user and adopter of AI reflects a pragmatic alignment with the current international order, where the scale of deployment and market integration play an important role. India’s technological approach has been strategic rather than driven by intensified rivalry. It has emphasised on welfare, development and norm based positioning in global politics. This positioning connects with emerging assessments of a possible mercantilist AI order, in which influence is shown not just by technological innovation but from control over data ecosystems, supply chains and management of AI enabled industries. India’s current approach can be assessed as one centred on strategic participation and influence.  Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his inaugural speech of the summit, pointed out that the summit being held in India is a case of pride for the Global South. This is largely because in a symbolic way India self-positions itself as a representative of the Global South.  In this sense, India’s AI strategy appears less rooted in technological production and more in status signalling. In fact, Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, in his remarks at the summit, highlighted the United States’ vision of AI sovereignty through strategic partnership with developing economies like India as key adoption partners within a U.S.-led technological ecosystem.

Despite substantial investments, India has yet to produce globally competitive foundational AI systems or platforms. Instead, it is leveraging its market size and human capital to project influence. Modi emphasised the fact that India views AI as ‘welfare for all, happiness for all’ (Sarvajana Hitaya, Sarvajana Sukhaya).  This aligns with T.V. Paul’s characterisation of India as a status-seeking power, one that often compensates for material gaps through diplomatic visibility and normative positioning. By positioning itself as a voice of the Global South in emerging technological governance, India seeks to convert symbolic authority into geopolitical relevance. Here the material gaps can be seen compensated through diplomatic positioning. Historically, India has positioned itself more as coalition-building and norm-based leadership. The AI Summit functioned not only as a technological gathering but also as a geopolitical performance, reinforcing India’s aspiration to be seen as a central actor (or facilitator) in the contemporary technological order. The summit hosted over 400 sessions and brought together representatives from more than 100 countries alongside chief executives from leading AI research and innovation firms. Such moments reflect a broader political strength in media optics and narrative framing.

Earlier, I had written that AI is no longer viewed only as a tool of technical innovation; it is increasingly seen as a ‘political actor’. In this context, the AI Summit in India might have revealed less about its technological breakthroughs, but its strategy is rooted within the global technological order, particularly as a leader in AI adoption and diffusion across the Global SouthIn this matter rather than competing directly with the United States or China in foundational AI development, India is focusing on scalling digital infrastructure. This aspect is a crucial factor, because eventually it will be about not just producing the best technology but also successfully implementing them, particularly in the longer term. India’s experience in integrating technology in large scale positions them as a strong pillar in the Global South to to facilitate adoption pathways and shape how AI is practically incorporated into everyday governance, agriculture system, education and economic systems.

While the summit produced limited immediate outcomes in terms of AI innovation, it demonstrated how power in the AI era may also derive from scale, optics and convening capacity. India’s strength lies in shaping how AI is employed and embedded into everyday social and economic systems, and something India can generate a strategic advantage in global diplomacy. Unlike the US or China where investment is more towards foundational models and building semiconductor systems, India’s seminconductor ecosystem has not scalled as expected. There are several structural challenges here including unorganised supply chain system, infrastructurural limitations like power and water supply and strong competition from countries like China and Taiwan. The renewed India Semiconductor Mission of 2021 could be a potential solution but its impact are yet to be exmined.

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