New Delhi hosted an AI summit, and if you paid attention, it felt like something shifted. The India AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam had the energy of a country that’s done waiting its turn. India has been circling the global AI conversation for years. This time it walked in like it belonged at the front.
Modi showing up wasn’t just good optics. When a sitting prime minister plants himself in the middle of a tech forum, it means something changed in the room where decisions get made. AI stopped being a startup talking point. It’s now sitting next to defense, energy, and foreign policy on the agenda. That’s a different world than five years ago.
The summit wrapped everything under People, Planet, Progress, which sounds great until you start pulling the thread. Everyone in that room agreed AI should be good. The actual argument, the one happening quietly over coffee and in side meetings, was about who gets to define that. That’s where the real summit was happening.
More than a hundred countries sent delegates. Hundreds of startups set up booths. On the surface, a tech expo. Underneath, countries jostling for influence, trying to shape investment flows and, more importantly, trying to get their fingerprints on the regulations that haven’t been written yet. Soft power wearing a lanyard.
India’s sovereign AI push isn’t sentiment. It’s cold calculation. Letting another country’s platforms run your hospitals, courts, and financial systems isn’t neutral. It’s dependence. Data and compute are the leverage points of this era, and India is making clear it intends to control its own.
The harder conversation always comes after the event wraps. Summits are designed for momentum, not accountability. The real pressure lands on the people who have to turn the speeches into legislation, and then live with what that legislation actually does to workers, communities, and institutions that weren’t in the room.
AI is already reshaping things. The race is on, the stakes are real, and the decisions are being made now. The question is whether governments are being straight with themselves about how bumpy this road actually gets. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
