The whole world will be watching the ‘India AI Impact Summit 2026’ being held in New Delhi this week. After Britain, South Korea and France, India is hosting this global forum this year. This event proves that India’s importance in the global market has increased more than ever. The summit will be organized from 16 to 20 February at various venues including Bharat Mandapam and Sushma Swaraj Bhawan in New Delhi. More than 100 countries will participate in this event, in which more than 300 companies from more than 30 countries will showcase their technologies.
Which celebrities from the tech world will be included?
Many prominent and influential personalities from the global tech industry are going to attend the AI Impact Summit:
- Sundar Pichai – CEO, Google and Alphabet
- Sam Altman – CEO, OpenAI
- Mukesh D Ambani – Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries
- Bill Gates – Chair, Gates Foundation
- Sir Demis Hassabis – Co-Founder and CEO, Google DeepMind
- Yann LeCun – Professor, New York University (NYU) and Executive Chairman, AMI Labs
- Yoshua Bengio – Founder and Chair, Mila Institute
- Dario Amodei – CEO, Anthropic
- Cristiano Amon – CEO, Qualcomm
- Brad Smith – President and Vice Chair, Microsoft
- Julie Sweet – Chair and CEO, Accenture
- Jai Puri – Executive Vice President, Nvidia
- N. Chandrasekaran – Chairman, Tata Sons
- Of. Kritivasan – CEO and Managing Director, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)
- C. Vijayakumar – CEO & Managing Director, HCL Tech
- Salil Parekh – CEO and Managing Director, Infosys
- Arundhati Bhattacharya – Chairperson and CEO, Salesforce India
- Nikesh Arora – Chairman and CEO, Palo Alto Networks
- Shantanu Narayan – Chair and CEO, Adobe
- Roy Jacobs – CEO, Royal Philips
- Borye Ekholm – President and CEO, Ericsson
- Martin Schroeter – Chairman and CEO, Kindrill
- Matthew Prince – CEO, Cloudflare
- Jai Chaudhary – CEO & Founder, Zyscaler
- Vishal Sikka – Founder and CEO, Vianai Systems
- Ravi Kumar S – CEO, Cognizant
- Nandan Nilekani – Co-Founder and Chairman, Infosys
- Sunil Bharti Mittal – Founder and Chairman, Bharti Enterprises
- Tony Blair – Executive Chairman, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
- Alexander Wang – Chief AI Officer, Meta
- Arthur Mensch – Co-Founder & CEO, Mistral AI
- Bipul Sinha – CEO & Co-Founder, Rubrik
- Borye Brende – President and CEO, World Economic Forum
- Amit Zaveri – President and COO, ServiceNow
- Anna Paula Assis – Senior Vice President and Chair (Asia Pacific and EMEA), IBM
- Aparna Bawa – COO, Zoom
- BVR Mohan Reddy – Founder and Chairman, Cyient Limited
However, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who was expected to come, canceled his visit at the last minute due to some reasons. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will welcome tech leaders in this summit. Apart from the tech giants, the event will also be attended by heads of state from 20 countries, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Lula da Silva.
Why is India important?
In the last few years, the Modi government has given clear indications that it wants to make India a global tech superpower. The government has approved semiconductor projects worth more than $18 billion (Rs 16 lakh crore) to strengthen chip manufacturing and supply chain in the country. As a result, Microsoft has promised to invest $17.5 billion (about Rs 1.45 lakh crore) for AI infrastructure in India. At the same time, the government is giving 21 years tax exemption to data centres, due to which companies like Nvidia are excited to invest here.
Venture capital investment in startups has been increasing in recent years and the Indian stock market is witnessing a surge in the number of IPOs. AI company Anthropic has appointed former Microsoft India head Irina Ghosh to lead its India operations. OpenAI has also started a separate sales division in India. Google has partnered with the government and Physics Corporation to promote AI in education.
2 lakh people registered
This summit is not limited to closed-door meetings only. The expo to be held at this summit will be spread over 70,000 square meters, in which more than 300 companies from 30 countries will showcase their technology. The special thing is that farmers and people working at the grassroots level have also been included in this event. So far, more than two lakh people have registered for the summit.
