AI Impact Summit 2026: MeitY Says AI Should Not Be Controlled by Small Set of Companies

AI Impact Summit 2026, India's inaugural artificial intelligence (AI) event, will be held between February 16 and 20 in New Delhi. Ahead of the event, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) shared the vision, thematic structure, and progress of the summit. During the briefing, it was revealed that the AI summit will focus on democratising AI infrastructure to prevent the risk of the technology being controlled by a small set of companies. Global access and AI-led development of humanity were mentioned as the key pillars.

AI Impact Summit 2026: Vision and Theme Revealed

MeitY held a media briefing on Monday, where the theme and the vision of the AI Impact Summit 2026 were revealed. The briefing was chaired by MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan and was attended by several government officials. At the onset, the Secretary said that the main theme of the event is the democratisation of AI and bridging the emerging AI divide.

To explain, Krishnan said, “A key concern across the international community has been the risk of AI becoming concentrated in a limited number of geographies and controlled by a small set of companies. To address this, AI must be made widely available as a horizontal, enabling technology that supports the development of humanity as a whole.”

The Indian AI summit is not only focusing on broadening access to the infrastructure internally, but also across the globe. This means sharing critical elements, such as compute, AI models, datasets, and more. Krishnan highlighted that broadening access will result in the development of AI solutions tailored to specific countries, societies, and communities.

The MeitY official also mentioned that primarily, the government is looking at productive sectors of the economy, including healthcare, agriculture, governance, education, manufacturing, and others, to benefit from the integration of the technology.

Notably, the AI Impact Summit 2026 has three guiding Sutras — People, Planet, and Progress. These three pillars define how AI should serve humanity, safeguard the environment, and drive inclusive economic and social growth. Each Sutra is operationalised via seven thematic Chakras or Working Groups, which structure the Summit's deliberations and outcomes.

The AI Impact Summit 2026 is being held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi and is expected to feature more than 300 exhibitions and be attended by delegations from more than 30 countries. Among attendees from the tech industry, the notable names include Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Anthropic Co-Founder and CEO Dario Amodei, Nvidia Co-Founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) CEO and Managing Director K. Krithivasan, Adobe Chair and CEO Shantanu Narayen, and more.