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India AI Summit Opens With $100B in Pledges, Every Major AI CEO in Attendance

The India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi draws 20 world leaders and CEOs from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and DeepMind. Adani pledges $100 billion for AI data centers, Anthropic opens its first India office, and 12 indigenous AI models are unveiled.

By Elena Marchetti • • 5 min read
India AI Summit Opens With $100B in Pledges, Every Major AI CEO in Attendance

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the India AI Impact Summit 2026 on February 16 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, opening the first major global AI summit ever hosted in the Global South. The five-day event (February 16-20) has drawn heads of state from over 20 countries, CEOs from every major AI company, and delegates from 100 nations. The summit has already produced investment pledges exceeding $100 billion, anchored by Adani Group's commitment to build renewable-energy-powered AI data centers.

The message from New Delhi is unambiguous: India intends to be a full participant in the AI race, not a spectator.

The Numbers Tell the Story

India's scale as an AI market is no longer speculative. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, writing in the Times of India ahead of the summit, revealed that India now has 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, making it OpenAI's second-largest market after the United States and home to its largest student user base globally.

Anthropic disclosed similar figures. CEO Dario Amodei announced that India has become the second-largest market for Claude, with the company's revenue run-rate in the country doubling since October 2025. To deepen its presence, Anthropic is opening its first India office in Bengaluru and has partnered with IT giant Infosys to deploy Claude across Indian enterprises, starting with a dedicated Anthropic Center of Excellence focused on the telecommunications sector.

The attendance list alone signals how seriously the global AI industry takes the Indian market. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, and French President Emmanuel Macron are among the headliners, alongside Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani and representatives from 45 ministerial-level delegations.

Adani's $100 Billion Bet

The largest single announcement came from the Adani Group, which pledged $100 billion to build hyperscale AI data centers powered by renewable energy by 2035. The data centers will be powered by the group's 30-gigawatt Khavda renewable energy park in Gujarat and built in strategic partnership with Google and Microsoft.

Adani projects this investment will catalyze a $250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem, including $150 billion across server manufacturing, infrastructure platforms, and cloud services. It is the largest AI infrastructure commitment outside the United States and China.

The Indian government is matching the private sector's ambition with a $1.1 billion state-backed venture capital fund earmarked for AI and advanced manufacturing startups.

Sovereign AI: 12 Indigenous Models

Perhaps the most symbolically important announcement is the unveiling of 12 indigenous AI foundation models built by Indian companies and research institutions. Organizations including Sarvam AI, BharatGen (a consortium led by IIT Bombay), Gnani AI, and Fractal Analytics are releasing models trained on Indian datasets spanning all 22 of India's official languages.

The models target domains where India faces unique challenges: agriculture, healthcare in rural areas, education in vernacular languages, and governance at scale. This is the clearest articulation yet of the "sovereign AI" thesis - that nations cannot depend entirely on American or Chinese models for critical infrastructure.

Altman's Full-Stack Vision

Sam Altman has been particularly bullish. He described India as a potential "full-stack AI leader" and outlined three strategic pillars driving the country's AI position: deep technical talent, a coordinated national AI strategy, and what he called "widespread public optimism" about technology-led growth.

Altman emphasized that OpenAI's approach is to build AI "in India, with India, and for India," signaling plans to expand partnerships with the Indian government to accelerate adoption and skills development. OpenAI opened its first Delhi office in August 2024 and has since trained over 200 nonprofit leaders across four cities on ChatGPT applications.

A Global South Statement

The summit's broader significance lies in who organized it and why. Seven working groups, each co-chaired by representatives from the Global North and Global South, are presenting proposals on shared compute resources, AI commons for public good, and developing-world use cases. The Indian government is expecting 250,000 visitors across the five days, with over 600 startups, 500 sessions, and 3,250 speakers and panelists.

Modi struck a measured tone in his inaugural address. "We are at the dawn of the AI age that will shape the course of humanity," he said. "Some people worry about machines becoming superior in intelligence to humans. But no one holds the key to our collective future and shared destiny other than us humans."

He also made a direct pitch to the global tech industry, inviting "the whole world's data to reside" in India and positioning the country's planned data centers as a major job creator for India's young workforce.

What It Means

The India AI Impact Summit is a statement of intent from the world's most populous nation. The combined investment pledges - Adani's $100 billion, Microsoft's previously announced $17.5 billion, Google's $6 billion data center, plus Amazon and Intel commitments from December - represent potentially the largest AI infrastructure buildout outside the U.S. and China.

India is no longer just a consumer of American AI products. With 100 million weekly ChatGPT users, sovereign AI models in 22 languages, and over $100 billion in committed infrastructure investment, it is positioning itself as the third pole in the global AI landscape. The main sessions on February 19-20 are expected to produce concrete policy proposals that could shape how the Global South engages with AI governance for years to come.

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India AI Summit OpenAI Anthropic Google Investment
About the author Senior AI Editor & Investigative Journalist

Elena is a technology journalist with over eight years of experience covering artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the startup ecosystem.