AI Summit in Delhi 2026 highlights: Day 1 of AI Impact Summit concludes, PM inaugurates expo with over 600 startups

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• Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the India AI Impact Expo at Bharat Mandapam, which has over 600 high-potential startups and 13 country pavilions.

• PM Modi engaged with startups and companies participating in the expo by visiting various stalls, and was seen asking questions to representatives.

• In a post on X, the Prime Minister said the expo “gives a glimpse of the extraordinary potential of AI, Indian talent and innovation.” “Together, we will shape solutions not just for India but for the world!” he said.

• PM Modi inaugurated the AI Impact Summit 2026, which will see over 20 Heads of State, 60 Ministers, and 500 global AI leaders participating.

• On Tuesday, union health minister J P Nadda is expected to launch two key initiatives at the India AI Summit. These are the Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare for India (SAHI) and the Benchmarking Open Data Platform for Health AI (BODH), PTI reported.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will deliver the inaugural address for the India AI Impact Summit 2026 on Thursday (February 19).

The summit, the first global AI event hosted in the Global South, is being held from February 16 to 20 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited Chairman Akash Ambani briefed Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Jio's comprehensive AI ecosystem and its role in accelerating digital transformation across sectors, ANI news agency reported.

PM Modi visited the Jio Intelligence Pavilion at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, where he reviewed AI-powered models and solutions. The Prime Minister also saw live demonstrations of Jio AI Stack, Jio Sanskriti AI, Jio Arogya AI, Jio Shiksha, and Jio AI Home.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the India AI Impact Expo 2026.

Taking to X, PM Modi said, “Being here among innovators, researchers and tech enthusiasts gives a glimpse of the extraordinary potential of AI, Indian talent and innovation.”

The Prime Minister further said that those participating "would shape solutions not just for India but for the world."

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Ivana Bartoletti, Global Chief Privacy and AI Governance Officer at Wipro, on Monday said India had “fantastic potential.”

“The major advantage is the scalability you (India) have demonstrated with digital public infrastructure, including UPI... of showing technological delivery at scale,” Bartoletti said, according to PTI news agency. “This is really important because the big challenge with artificial intelligence is deployment at scale,” she said on the sidelines of India AI Impact Summit.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: India can lead in making artificial intelligence more accessible to the Global South, BCG India Managing Director & Partner, Sidharth Madaan, said Monday.

Madaan also said India had “done very well” in language models, like 'Bhashini' or 'Sarvam'. “Just by taking a lot of content and the knowledge available to different markets, leveraging the technology we have cracked, the language models we have cracked will be actually phenomenally powerful,” PTI cited Madaan as saying.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with startups, researchers, and technology leaders as he inaugurated India AI Impact Expo at the Bharat Mandapam, ANI news agency reported.

PM Modi explored multiple exhibition pavilions, marking the launch of the event which runs from February 16 to 20 alongside the India AI Impact Summit 2026.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Marine Collins Ragnet, AI Lead and Senior Researcher at NYU's Peace Research and Education Program (PREP), said it was “incredible to see the approach that India has taken to become kind of sovereign in its AI development.”

“I was saying it on the panel. think it's incredible that this is the first panel that's hosted in the global south,” Ragnet told ANI news agency. The researcher further said that India sits at an “interesting position” between “the global south and the global north.”

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: After inaugurating the India AI Impact Expo on Monday evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with companies and startups there.

PM Modi visited various stalls at the Expo, which features over 600 high-potential startups and 13 country pavilions, PTI news agency reported.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives to inaugurate the India AI Impact Expo at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Prine Minister Narendra Modi on Monday evening inaugurated the India AI Impact Expo.

The India AI Impact Summit along with an expo is organized at New Delhi's Bharat Mandapam and will continue till February 20. According to an advisory, the summit will be open to general public from February 17 after its inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday evening.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Union minister of information and broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw on Sunday spoke about balancing the negative and positive impacts of AI.

“There are positive impacts of AI, including weather forecasting, climate change, agriculture, the discovery of new materials, and productivity gains. There are potential negative impacts,” Vaishnaw said.

He added that India was looking to balance these impacts to capture the benefits and contain the harms. “We will come out with a good outcome from this summit,” Vaishnaw said.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Posters and hoardings welcoming French President Emmanuel Macron were put up across Mumbai. Macron and his wife, First Lady Brigitte Macron, will be visiting India from February 16-19. The French President will arrive and Mumbai, and travel to Delhi to attend the AI Impact Summit 2026.

Macron is expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 17.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Tajikistan representative Firuzjon Sodiqov on Monday said the country is focused on leveraging AI to improve the speed and quality of public services for citizens.

“First of all, what we focus on is improving the quality of services and speed of services for citizens by using AI and deploying AI in different sectors,” Deputy Chair at the Artificial Intelligence Council under the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies of Tajikistan, Sodiqov, said, according to ANI news agency.

“I think we have very high expectations, given our follow-up on India's AI progress and its initiatives at this summit,” Sodiqov asserted.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Artificial intelligence is reforming social good for generations to come and effectively augmenting essential human capabilities, Harish Krishnan, Managing Director and Chief Policy Officer Cisco Systems India, said.

Speaking at the AI Impact Summit 2026 on 'Democratising AI Resources for Economic Growth and Social Good', Krishnan said that skills that most matter are human skills, adding that “AI agents are doing it effectively”, ANI news agency reported.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Ottonomy Inc unveiled its end-to-end autonomous delivery ecosystem at the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi.

The ecosystem integrates Ottonomy's Level-4 autonomous delivery robots, 'Ottobots', with smart storage infrastructure 'Arrive Points' from Arrive AI and drone logistics capabilities from Skyeair Mobility, PTI cited Ottonomy as saying in a statement.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Ashwini Vaishnaw, spoke on the crisis around the spread of “persistent disinformation, misinformation and deepfakes.”

Vaishnaw said that India is in talks with ministers of more than 30 countries in this regard, ANI news agency reported.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Principal scientific adviser Ajay Kumar Sood on Monday said that artificial intelligence is a “double-edged sword.”

At the session on 'AI and Children: Turning Principles into Practice for Safe, Inclusive, and Empowering AI', Sood said, “The governance objective should be to sharpen the edge of opportunity while blunting the edge of risk.”

He said that on the positive side, AI can support more personalised pedagogy by helping children learn at their own pace and also provide them with timely feedback beyond classroom hours, PTI reported.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: One of the key expectations from artificial intelligence, especially in public health, is that it should reduce the burden on the health care workforce, Punya Salila Srivastava, IAS and Secretary, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, said.

Delivering the keynote speech for the panel titled "National AI Strategy for Health" at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, she said that the entire health system has undergone a steady digital transformation over the past decade, PTI reported.

This blueprint therefore promotes open standards and adopts emerging technologies like generative AI, to strengthen service delivery and enable early disease detection, she said.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: The world's largest largest artificial intelligence summit witnessed packed halls and long queues after its opening Monday. Tech moguls, industry leaders, policymakers, founders, and technologists arrived at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, PTI news agency reported.

The conference opened at 9.30 am to long queues, with huge billboards around the venue and across the Capital welcoming delegates.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Minister of State Jitin Prasada on Monday said that during the ‘AI for education’ session at the AI Impact Summit at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, the role of AI in education was discussed.

“…Discussed how technology is preparing schools, colleges, and students for the future, and spoke about the new opportunities for innovation and growth it brings,” Prasada said in a post on X. He said that the government was working towards making education more accessible and effective through AI under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“We are fully confident that this event will make a meaningful contribution towards using the power of AI to make India a global knowledge hub,” he said.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Gaurav Kataria, VP Digital (Manufacturing) and CDIO PSPD at ITC Ltd told ANI news agency that bringing the most brilliant minds from the globe into one stage in New Delhi, in India to talk about AI is a “fantastic endeavour” by the government.

Regarding AI, Kataria said that everyone has to “learn and evolve”, given that it is a “new technology.” However, Kataria emphasised on some “guardrails”. He further said that the government is “doing a great job from a policy perspective.”

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: As the first day of India AI Impact Summit continues in full swing at New Delhi's Bharat Mandapam, commuters experienced traffic congestions and travel delays at several areas in the city.

While enhanced security arrangements and traffic diversions were placed in effect, long queues of vehicles and near-zero movement were reported on key arterial routes and transport hubs, including the Delhi-Meerut Expressway near Sarai Kale Khan, the DND Flyway, the Vikas Marg-ITO stretch, Naraina, the Delhi Cantt Metro station area, and the Old Delhi Railway Station-Pul Mithai corridor, reported news agency PTI.

AI Summit in Delhi 2026 LIVE: Addressing a session at India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi's Bharat Mandapam, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Chief Intergovernmental Interagency cooperation and Partnerships Branch Sujit Mohanty said India has done a lot of work in using AI predictive analysis in disaster management.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can also play a vital role in disaster management, specially in minimising losses but it would need legal and policy framework for such new age technologies to be able to be relied upon by officials at ground level who would take decisions for preventive actions, news agency PTI reported quoting a top UNDRR official.

“This whole technology space is really growing well, growing fast... You are seeing solutions which were not possible earlier...,” Mohanty said, citing the usage of AI in predicting and analysing the risk disasters.

He also added that authorities should be present at the grassroot level and check if AI is really helping them in making decisions of people's life, livelihood, and their economic assets, and see if damage due to disasters has been reduced.