India's AI Summit Aims to Forge Third Global Pole Amid US-China Dominance
India has concluded its flagship artificial intelligence summit in New Delhi with dozens of countries committing to "democratise" AI technology, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi positioned this goal at the forefront of his pitch to world leaders and technology executives. The agreement culminates a week where India sought to showcase its domestic AI capabilities while establishing itself as a third option in the global AI race, traditionally framed as a contest between Silicon Valley and Beijing.
However, experts caution that quantifying how much the highly anticipated summit advanced India's actual ambitions remains challenging. The New Delhi Declaration, endorsed by 89 countries and international organisations, commits signatories to what it terms the "democratic diffusion" of AI: expanding access, building skills, and promoting cooperation rather than concentrating power.
Shifting Focus from Safety to Inclusion
Analysts note the declaration highlights AI diplomacy's new emphasis on access and inclusion, moving beyond earlier summits that centred heavily on safety concerns from rapidly advancing AI capabilities. "The summit placed inclusion at the centre of the AI agenda," states Heather Dawe, head of responsible AI at UST, an AI and technology transformation solutions company.
"Government officials and tech leaders have delivered a unified message – AI must reflect shared values. That mirrors the Paris Declaration's clear focus on inclusivity and human rights," she added. This emphasis demonstrates how far the conversation has shifted since the first UK-hosted summit, which focused heavily on safety and catastrophic risk. Delhi's edition was explicitly branded around "impact," with the slogan "AI for all" repeated across sessions and speeches.
Global Leadership and Sovereignty Concerns
Prime Minister Modi described AI as a "global common good" that "must be democratised" and made "a medium for inclusion and empowerment, especially in the Global South." United Nations secretary-general António Guterres supported this call, warning that the future of AI "cannot be decided by a handful of countries or left to the whims of a few billionaires" and insisting that "AI must belong to everyone."
Technology executives signalled openness to stronger governance. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman called for creating an international body, modelled on the International Atomic Energy Agency, for "international coordination of AI," as he warned rapidly advancing systems could soon be powerful enough to help create new pathogens.
India's technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw termed the summit a "grand success" and proof of "confidence in India's role in the new AI age," citing 20 world leaders, delegates from over 100 countries, and more than 250,000 attendees. Notably, the leaders of the two dominant powers in the AI race, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, were not present, though represented by officials and companies who signed the declaration.
The Push for a Third Front
The gathering became an opportunity to push for a third front and reduce dependence on both US and Chinese models. "We don't want to be dependent on a totally US or totally Chinese model," French president Emmanuel Macron, on a busy two-city trip to India, told the summit. "We really believe that we need a broader one, and we want to be part of the solutions, and we want to have players being part of the solutions," he added.
Analysts observe the summit revealed how much US and EU ties have strained after Trump's repeated threats over Greenland, pushing several countries away. Sean O hEigeartaigh, director at AI: Futures and Responsibility Programme at University of Cambridge, noted in a LinkedIn post that many people in the US "genuinely don't seem to get how much Greenland changed things for EU and other relevant countries."
He added that the most important conversations at the summit centred on coordination between "middle powers." "It suddenly seems just about possible that a coalition might assert itself that might provide a third pole in the 'AI race', though many big challenges remain on that path."
Sovereignty and Cultural Representation
For India, becoming an alternative means greater control over AI systems its vast population uses amid geopolitical uncertainties and trade tensions with the US. Across panels and product launches, the word "sovereignty" appeared repeatedly. Several foundational models trained from scratch on Indian data were unveiled, aimed at bringing AI to Indians in their languages.
Rishi Bal, chief executive of BharatGen, the government-backed consortium behind one multilingual model, defines sovereignty as "control and access." It means "the ability to be guaranteed that you will always have access to that product, service in this case. AI... the ability to know what has gone inside of that AI so that when you deploy it, it actually works exactly as intended... and sovereignty is the ability to service that AI to do what you want and have the keys to that AI," he explained.
For Bal, sovereignty is also cultural. "The frontier models today speak like West Coast America," he says. "I think every nation is going to want an AI that speaks like them, that reflects their culture, their values, and their perspective. Now we see AI in the future consisting of a wide variety of artificial intelligence, and they'll come in diverse sizes and functionality."
Challenges and Strategic Advantages
Lack of advanced manufacturing in India presents concerns. The country does not currently manufacture advanced AI chips domestically and remains dependent on global semiconductor supply chains. It is not positioned to match the frontier spending of Silicon Valley or Beijing. Instead, the articulated strategy focuses on localisation and deployment at scale.
Nevertheless, the summit secured billions in investment. Reliance Industries and the Adani Group each outlined plans of roughly $100 billion over the coming decade. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google also announced plans to expand their India operations.
Karan Girotra, a professor of operations, technology, and innovation at Cornell Tech, notes these figures, while providing a much-needed boost for India's AI sector, are dwarfed by American companies' annual investments. "These numbers sound big, but remember, the big four US companies are talking 800 billion in the next year," he says. "So this is 100bn in the next 10 years. So let's calibrate that."
For Girotra, India's advantage lies in market scale and talent rather than headline spending. "India is a big market, probably the third biggest market for most technology companies," he says. "One important thing that AI does is it brings the cost of knowledge work down, which means many things like medicine and teaching can be made accessible to many more people."
Focus on Tangible Deployment
That focus on deployment was echoed by Indian billionaire Nandan Nilekani, who co-founded Infosys and played a key role in creating India's digital public infrastructure. "India will be where you'll see most of the deployment of AI in a tangible way... where farmers can make more money, where children learn better, where healthcare improves," he says. "The world needs this demonstrated, and AI companies need this shown because they must display real examples where this works at scale for people."
The massive attendance at the summit, which also caused some chaos and traffic jams, reflected this ambition. Large numbers of students brought on school buses, women entrepreneurs and developers attending in significant numbers, and packed sessions stretched beyond scheduled hours.
Technology commentator Nikhil Pahwa suggests the longer-term impact of the summit extends beyond declarations and speeches to the conversations it generates. "If every government department in both state and centre starts thinking about integrating AI into their workflows, that will mean rapid adoption of AI," he concludes.
