Vaishnaw sets the stage for AI Impact Summit 2026

As India prepares itself to host the AI Impact Summit in February 2026, the country’s technological standpoint takes centre stage in a pre-event organised by NITI Aayog. The gathering addressed by Union ministers Ashwani Vaishnaw and Nirmala Sitharaman highlighted India’s strides in AI, semiconductors and frontier technologies, framing them as the backbone of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of Viksit Bharat.

Vaishnaw, in his address, described a constellation of technologies that India must master- including telecom, semiconductors, EVs, biotech, quantum, rare earths, and AI to achieve developed nation status.

As he remarked, at the heart of this constellation lies India’s 20-year Semiconductor Mission, which Vaishnaw presented as an unprecedented success story in academic-industry collaboration. 278 universities now have students designing chips with access to advanced EDA tools. 20 student-designed chips have already been manufactured at SCl Mohali, with 15 more in fabrication.

“Where in the world will you find university students designing complete chips which get manufactured and tested?” he asked, framing it as proof of India’s growing self-reliance in hardware innovation.

AI for every district

India’s AI Mission, launched with a target of 10,000 GPUs, has scaled nearly fourfold to 38,000 GPUs, alongside the release of more than 2,000 curated datasets for training and inference.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman reinforced this inclusivity push, stressing that AI adoption cannot remain limited to aspirational districts.

“All 760-770 districts will have to be in the repository either to benefit from or to put in their success stories into it.”

Regulation with innovation

The event also resonated with India’s distinctive innovation-first regulatory stance. While Europe has leaned towards a law-first model, India is developing a techno-legal approach, anchored by the AI Safety Institute’s networked research on challenges like deepfake detection.

Sitharaman drew particular attention to the Reserve Bank of India’s regulatory sandboxes for AI in financial and insurance services:

“We do not want a regulation that literally wipes off the technology itself. We want regulations because we want responsible application.”

AI and the workforce

Acknowledging concerns that up to 80% of jobs could face disruption, they framed AI not as a threat but as an opportunity for structured upskilling and reskilling. It is being upgraded into AI learning hubs under a hub-and-spoke model. School dropouts, graduates, and working professionals can all access AI-ready training.

Certifications reform is underway to ensure AI credentials carry industry weight. And, this workforce-first vision aligns with India’s demographic dividend, ensuring human capital grows alongside AI adoption.

India as the host of the AI Impact Summit 2026

Looking ahead towards the horizon, India’s achievements are not limited to national milestones, but they are being positioned on the global stage. In February 2026, India will host the AI Impact Summit, an event expected to convene policymakers, industry leaders, researchers, and innovators from across the world.

Their combined message was clear: India is not just catching up—it is sprinting ahead.