New Delhi is straight-up electric right now. Tomorrow, February 16, the India AI Impact Summit 2026 kicks off at Bharat Mandapam, and honestly, the whole city feels like it’s holding its breath. This thing runs till February 20—five full days of non-stop talks, demos, deals, and probably a ton of chai-fueled side chats that end up mattering more than the official sessions.
PM Modi is inaugurating the Expo part on the 16th at 5 PM, and he’s got the main keynote on the 19th plus some high-level CEO roundtable. He personally invited a bunch of world leaders, and yeah, a good number showed up. French President Emmanuel Macron is here, Brazil’s Lula da Silva too, plus reps from over 30 countries including the US, China, Japan, UK—you name it. UN folks are in the mix as well. This is a massive moment for the Global South—the first time the spotlight has truly shifted from London and Paris to New Delhi for a summit of this scale.
On the tech side, the lineup is stacked. Sundar Pichai from Google, Sam Altman from OpenAI, Dario Amodei from Anthropic, Demis Hassabis from DeepMind, Jensen Huang from NVIDIA—they’re all expected. Indian heavyweights like Mukesh Ambani (Reliance), Nandan Nilekani (Infosys), Natarajan Chandrasekaran (Tata Sons) will be rubbing shoulders with execs from Microsoft, Meta, Qualcomm, Accenture, and more. Reports say around 35-40 top CEOs in total, and Modi is meeting many of them on the sidelines to talk investments, jobs, and India’s AI roadmap.
The whole event is built around three big ideas: People (making sure AI respects dignity and includes everyone), Planet (keeping it green and sustainable), and Progress (spreading the benefits fairly). They’ve got these seven “Chakras” for collab—stuff like building human capital, social empowerment, safe & trusted AI, scientific push, resilience, innovation, and democratizing resources. It’s not just buzzwords; sessions are diving into real applications like AI helping farmers spot crop issues early, healthcare diagnostics, education tools, you get it.
Over 700 sessions planned—plenaries, keynotes, panels, the works. There’s the India AI Impact Expo with 300+ exhibitors from 30+ countries, thematic pavilions, live demos. Challenges like AI for All, AI by HER (women-led only), and YUVAi Youth are wrapping up with finalists presenting and getting awards early in the week. A research symposium is digging into cutting-edge stuff, and there’s special focus on what AI means for the Global South—challenges, opportunities, all that.
India’s been pushing hard on this front. Massive investments in data centers, GPUs, leveraging our 6 million tech pros to aim for real AI sovereignty. Altman himself said India has over 100 million ChatGPT users and the “factors” to lead—not just consume, but build and own. That’s the vibe: not chasing supremacy, but carving out an inclusive, self-reliant spot.
Traffic in Delhi is gonna be a nightmare, online registrations surged past 2 lakh (200,000) from 100+ countries. If you’re anywhere near Pragati Maidan, expect crowds, security, and probably some epic networking. Whether you’re grinding in startups, policy, or just watching from afar, this week could drop some announcements that ripple for years—partnerships, funding, frameworks.Delhi’s turned into the global AI hotspot for these five days. Let’s see what actually comes out of all the handshakes and slides.
