India is hosting one of the world’s largest artificial intelligence gatherings starting Monday, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi looks to position the country as a key player in the global race to build advanced AI models.
Global leaders, technology executives, startup founders, and investors are arriving in New Delhi for the India AI Impact Summit, which will run through February 20, 2026.
Sundar Pichai of Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL), OpenAI’s (OPENAI) Sam Altman, Anthropic’s (ANTHRO) Dario Amodei, Meta Platforms’ (META) Alexandr Wang, Cloudflare’s (NET) Matthew Prince, Qualcomm’s (QCOM) Cristiano Amon, and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Brad Smith are on the guest-list, along with leading AI leaders. AMD’s (AMD) CEO Lisa Su is also scheduled to appear.
French President Emmanuel Macron is scheduled to deliver a keynote address on Feb. 19, followed by remarks from PM Modi. Jensen Huang of Nvidia (NVDA), who was expected to attend, withdrew at the last-minute citing “unforeseen circumstances.”
The summit comes as India and the U.S. work toward a new trade agreement. Modi’s government has been pushing to turn India into a global technology powerhouse, approving about $18B in semiconductor projects to build a domestic supply chain.
At the same time, global AI firms are increasing their presence in the country. OpenAI (OPENAI) and Anthropic (ANTHRO) are setting up operations and targeting businesses, developers, and government clients, while Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) and Meta (META) are expanding data centers to serve India’s fast-growing AI market.
Nvidia (NVDA), facing U.S. export restrictions on advanced chips to China, sees India as a key growth market despite its chief’s absence from the summit.