India Positions Itself as the Third Way in Global AI Race

The India AI Impact Summit isn't just a conference—it's a bid to reshape who controls artificial intelligence.

The India AI Impact Summit 2026, held February 16-20 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, represents the most significant strategic move yet by a Global South nation to reshape the global artificial intelligence power structure. With Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, and Anthropic's Dario Amodei in attendance alongside 15-20 heads of government, the summit was not merely a conference. It was a declaration of intent.

The Three-Way Race Takes Shape For the past several years, the AI landscape has been framed as a two-horse race between the United States and China. American companies dominate frontier model development. Chinese firms, led by DeepSeek and Baidu, have demonstrated competitive capabilities at lower costs. India's summit challenges this framing directly, proposing a third path that neither mimics Silicon Valley's capital-intensive approach nor Beijing's state-directed model. Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the summit with a pointed observation: "The nations that shape AI governance will shape the 21st century. India intends to be at that table, not as a follower, but as a leader with a different vision." That vision centers on what Indian officials call "Small AI"—resource-efficient approaches designed for contexts where billion-dollar data centers and massive compute budgets are neither feasible nor desirable.

The Seven Chakras Framework The summit's organizing structure—"Three Sutras" (People, Planet, Progress) and "Seven

Chakras" working groups—drew over 700 session proposals from 90 countries.

The framework emphasizes inclusion, sustainability, and accessibility in ways that directly contrast with Western AI development priorities. Working groups addressed AI for agriculture, healthcare access, climate adaptation, education, financial inclusion, digital infrastructure, and governance. Each session was required to present implementation plans for developing economies, not just theoretical possibilities. Dr. Rohini Srivastava, co-chair of the Healthcare Chakra, described the approach as pragmatic rather than aspirational. "We are not trying to build the next GPT. We are trying to ensure that the AI revolution does not leave 4 billion people behind. Those are fundamentally different engineering challenges." ## Corporate Commitments and Commercial Stakes The summit produced concrete corporate commitments that signal sustained engagement beyond symbolic participation. Anthropic announced the expansion of its India operations, including a new research partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology system. OpenAI revealed plans for a dedicated India sales division, its first country-specific commercial team outside the United States. Google deepened its existing India presence with education-focused AI partnerships across five states, while Nvidia confirmed it is monitoring India's data center incentive programs for potential investment. More than 100 U.S. firms participated through the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum, indicating serious commercial interest. Indian startups also used the summit to announce fundraising rounds totaling over $800 million, with several positioning themselves as alternatives to Western AI tools for markets across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

The GPAI Council and Institutional Power Perhaps the summit's most consequential outcome was the Global Partnership on AI Council meeting, which India hosted as current chair. The GPAI, a 29-member intergovernmental initiative, provides a formal platform for standard-setting and governance coordination. India used its chair position to advance proposals on AI safety testing for developing-economy contexts, data sovereignty frameworks, and multilateral compute-sharing agreements. Several proposals received preliminary endorsement from European and African delegations, though U.S. and Chinese representatives were more cautious. The institutional play matters because it establishes India as a permanent voice in AI governance, regardless of whether Indian companies ever produce frontier models. Standards, testing frameworks, and governance norms can shape the industry as profoundly as technical capabilities.

India's Structural Advantages India brings genuine assets to the AI competition. The country generates roughly 20 percent of the world's data, possesses the second-largest AI workforce globally, and has over 700 million internet users. Its democratic governance structure offers an alternative to China's state-controlled approach for nations uncomfortable with either model. The English-speaking talent pool and established IT services industry—which already serves most

Fortune 500 companies—provide commercial infrastructure that most developing nations lack. India's UP

I digital payments system, which processes over 10 billion transactions monthly, demonstrates the country's capacity for large-scale technology deployment.

The Skeptic's Case Not everyone is convinced. Critics point to India's infrastructure gaps—unreliable electricity in many regions, limited high-speed internet penetration outside major cities, and bureaucratic complexity that has historically slowed technology deployment. India's AI research output, while growing, remains a fraction of U.S. or Chinese production. "India has been declaring itself the next technology superpower for two decades," noted Dr. James Chen, a technology policy researcher at Georgetown University. "The summit was impressive, but the gap between summit declarations and ground-level implementation remains India's fundamental challenge." The "Small AI" concept, while intellectually compelling, has yet to produce breakthrough applications at scale. Resource-efficient models exist, but they have not demonstrated the transformative capabilities that have made frontier models the focus of global attention.

What This Means The India AI Impact Summit matters not because India will overtake the U.S. or China in frontier model development. It will not, at least not in the near term. The summit matters because it establishes a credible alternative framework—one that prioritizes accessibility, sustainability, and governance over raw capability. For the 140 countries that are neither the U.S. nor China, India's framework offers a third option. The question is no longer whether a three-way AI race exists. It is whether India can execute on the vision it articulated in New Delhi. The corporate commitments, institutional positioning, and framework development suggest the attempt is serious. The outcome remains uncertain.

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India Positions Itself as the Third Way in Global AI Race

The Seven Chakras Framework The summit's organizing structure—"Three Sutras" (People, Planet, Progress) and "Seven

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