Modi pitches India as global AI hub at summit
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has touted his country as a central player in the global artificial intelligence ecosystem and said the country aims to distribute the technology around the world while also producing it at home.
“Design and develop in India. Deliver to the world. Deliver to humanity,” Modi said at a meeting attended by some world leaders, technology executives and policy makers at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on Thursday.
Modi’s remarks come as India, one of the fastest-growing digital markets, seeks to leverage its experience in building large-scale digital public infrastructure and present itself as a cost-effective hub for AI innovation.
French President Emmanuel Macron, Microsoft chief Brad Smith, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and UN Secretary-General António Guterres also spoke at the summit, calling for a $3 billion fund to help poor countries develop basic AI capacity, including skills, data access and affordable computing power.
Guterres emphasized that artificial intelligence should “belong to everyone” and said, “The future of artificial intelligence cannot be decided by a handful of countries or left to the whims of a few billionaires.”
India is using the summit to position itself as a bridge between developed economies and the Global South. Indian officials tout the country’s digital identity and online payment systems as a model for low-cost deployment of artificial intelligence, especially in developing countries.
“We must democratize AI. It must become a tool for participation and empowerment, especially for the Global South,” Modi said.
He then met individually with technology leaders, many of whom outlined their investment plans in India.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company will collaborate with India’s Tata Group on artificial intelligence initiatives, including the development of data center infrastructure in the country.
“We believe that the democratization of AI is the only fair and safe path forward,” Altman said at the meeting. he said.
With nearly 1 billion internet users, India has become a key market for global technology companies expanding their AI businesses.
Google, Microsoft and Amazon have promised massive investment of billions of dollars in India.
But the country is lagging in developing its own large-scale artificial intelligence model, such as US-based OpenAI or China’s DeepSeek, underscoring challenges such as limited access to advanced semiconductor chips, data centers and hundreds of local languages that can be learned.
The summit started on Monday with organizational glitches; exhibitors and exhibitors reported long lines and delays, and some complained on social media about having their personal belongings and display items stolen. Organizers later said the items had been recovered.
Problems resurfaced at a private Indian university on Wednesday after a staff member displayed a commercially available Chinese-made robot dog, claiming it was the institution’s own innovation.
The setbacks continued on Thursday, when Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates withdrew from a planned keynote speech. Although the Gates Foundation said that the purpose of this move was to “focus on the key priorities of the AI Summit,” no reason was given.
Gates faces questions over his ties to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
