QUICK TAKE:
| Event: | India AI Impact Summit 2026—First global AI summit in the Global South, Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi |
| Date: | February 19, 2026 | CEO Roundtable chaired by PM Modi from 5:30 PM |
| Scale: | 500+ global AI leaders, 20+ Heads of State, 60+ ministers, and 100+ CEOs across 100+ countries |
| Key Vision: | PM Modi unveils MANAV framework—India’s blueprint for human-centric, responsible AI governance |
| Biggest Bet: | Mukesh Ambani pledges ₹10 lakh crore (Rs 10 trillion). Reliance-Jio AI investment over 7 years |
| Global Signal: | Sam Altman: India leading world in AI adoption; Sundar Pichai: $15 Bn Google investment in India |
THE STORY
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday chaired the landmark CEO Roundtable at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi—the first-ever global AI summit hosted in the Global South—bringing together the world’s most powerful technology leaders, heads of state, and multilateral institutions to forge a shared roadmap for responsible, inclusive artificial intelligence. The day’s signature moment was PM Modi’s unveiling of the MANAV framework: India’s sovereign vision for human-centric AI governance that positions the country as both a global AI hub and the conscience of the AI age.
WHY THIS MATTERS
New Delhi’s hosting of the AI Impact Summit—succeeding events in the UK, South Korea, France, and Africa—confirms India’s rapid ascent as a global AI governance power. The summit’s theme, ‘Sarvajan Hitay, Sarvajan Sukhay’ (welfare for all, happiness for all), is not diplomatic boilerplate. It encodes India’s strategic bet: that the next billion AI users will be Indian, that the Global South will be AI’s largest market, and that whoever writes the governance rules today will set the terms of the AI economy for the next fifty years. The CEO Roundtable, chaired by the prime minister himself, sent an unmistakable signal to every tech boardroom from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen: India is open for AI business, on its own terms.
The MANAV Framework: India’s Blueprint for Human-Centric AI
In the day’s most consequential announcement, PM Modi introduced India’s MANAV Vision — a five-pillar AI governance architecture whose acronym, fittingly, means ‘human’ in Sanskrit. He described AI as a force that “must be a multiplier, not a monopoly” and insisted that the framework would serve as “a vital foundation for AI in the next century.”
| Letter | Pillar | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| M | Moral & Ethical Systems | AI must be built on ethical guidelines; human dignity cannot be traded for efficiency |
| A | Accountable Governance | Transparent rules and robust oversight; no black-box deployments at societal scale |
| N | National Sovereignty | Data belongs to its rightful owner; India’s data must not be processed without consent |
| A | Accessible & Inclusive | AI must not be a monopoly of the wealthy; it must be a multiplier for everyone |
| V | Valid & Legitimate | AI must operate within democratic norms and legal frameworks; lawful and verifiable |
Modi also launched the ‘New Delhi Frontier AI Commitments’—a multilateral framework signed by participating nations—focused on responsible development, safety standards, transparency, and inclusion. India also set a Guinness World Record: 2.5 lakh AI responsibility pledges collected in 24 hours, underscoring public resonance with the summit’s themes.
CEO Roundtable: What The World’s Top Tech Leaders Said
The evening CEO Roundtable drew the most consequential gathering of global AI leadership India has ever hosted—and produced both commitments and controversy in equal measure.
| Leader | Organisation | Key Statement / Commitment | Strategic Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Narendra Modi | PM of India | Unveiled MANAV framework: ‘AI must be multiplier, not a monopoly.’ | India as global AI governance architect |
| Sundar Pichai | Google & Alphabet | ‘AI must be deployed responsibly to avoid worsening inequality’; $15 Bn India infra pledge | Google deepening India bet for AI hub |
| Sam Altman | OpenAI | ‘India is leading the world in AI adoption’; Tata-TCS-OpenAI partnership announced | India as OpenAI’s largest growth market |
| Dario Amodei | Anthropic | ‘India central to defining global AI standards’; major testing ground for AI apps | India as Anthropic’s safety-test bed |
| Mukesh Ambani | Reliance / Jio | ₹10 lakh crore AI investment; gigawatt data centres in Jamnagar by H2 2026 | India building sovereign AI infrastructure |
| Emmanuel Macron | President of France | “India is central to shaping AI governance globally.” inclusive AI adoption is key | Multilateral AI governance coalition |
| Antonio Guterres | UN Sec-General | AI’s future ‘cannot be decided by a handful of countries or billionaires.’ | Global South must shape AI rules |
| Demis Hassabis | Google DeepMind | Discussed AlphaFold impact; AI for science and drug discovery in India | India as AI-for-science partner |
Ambani’s ₹10 Lakh Crore Bet: The Biggest Corporate AI Commitment in Indian History
Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani made the summit’s most dramatic corporate announcement: a pledge of ₹10 lakh crore (approximately $115 billion) over seven years through Reliance and Jio, positioning Jio Intelligence as India’s sovereign AI infrastructure backbone. Ambani described AI as the modern-day Akshaya Patra — the mythological vessel that provided endless nourishment to all — and declared that India “cannot afford to rent intelligence.”
Key announcements included gigawatt-scale AI-ready data centres at Jamnagar (120 MW coming online in H2 2026, scaling toward gigawatt capacity), green energy infrastructure of up to 10 GW in Kutch and Andhra Pradesh, a nationwide edge compute network integrated with Jio’s telecom backbone, and AI tools including JioShikshak (education) and JioArogyaAI (healthcare).
“Jio, together with Reliance, will invest Rs 10 lakh crore over the next seven years starting this year. This is not speculative investment. It is patient, disciplined, nation-building capital designed to create durable economic value and strategic resilience for decades to come.” — Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries
In His Own Words: PM Modi at the CEO Roundtable
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India AI Impact Summit 2026: The Bigger Picture
The India AI Impact Summit 2026, held from February 16–20 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, is the first global AI governance summit hosted in the Global South — succeeding the UK AI Safety Summit (2023), AI Seoul Summit, and France AI Action Summit. It brings together over 500 global AI leaders across seven working groups organised under three pillars: People, Planet, and Progress.
- AI for Economic Growth and Social Good: Scaling AI access for MSMEs, agriculture, healthcare, and governance
- Democratising AI Resources: Compute access under $1/hour; reducing infrastructure concentration in the Global North
- Inclusion for Social Empowerment: AI-design that accounts for India’s linguistic diversity (22 official languages, 1,600+ dialects)
- Safe and Trusted AI: Governance frameworks, ethical standards, and safety certification
- Science & Innovation: AlphaFold-style breakthroughs in drug discovery, climate modelling, and materials science
STARTUPFEED INSIGHT
| What the Numbers Say: India has 500 million+ Jio subscribers, the world’s second-largest OpenAI user base, and $18 Bn in approved semiconductor projects. The MANAV framework is not philosophy — it’s the diplomatic packaging for a $400 Bn AI economy-in-the-making. | |
| For Founders: | MeitY’s compute-at-$1/hour pledge makes India the cheapest AI training ground globally. If you’re building AI in India, your infrastructure cost advantage just widened further. |
| For Investors: | Ambani’s ₹10 lakh crore commitment over 7 years signals a decade-long AI infrastructure supercycle in India. Bets on edge compute, sovereign data, and AI-first SaaS now have the strongest macro tailwind ever. |
| For Policymakers: | The ‘New Delhi Frontier AI Commitments’ create India’s first formal multilateral AI governance position. This is the Bretton Woods moment for AI — and India just pulled a chair to the head of the table. |
| Our Prediction: By Q4 2027, the MANAV framework will be formally adopted by 30+ nations as the template for Global South AI governance, directly rivalling the EU AI Act in geopolitical influence. India’s IndiaAI Mission will produce the first sovereign LLM in an Indic language to break into the global top-10 benchmarks. | |
