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As AI governance takes shape globally, the Global South must articulate a shared vision that reflects its economic diversity, development priorities, and capacity constraints.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is fast emerging as a powerful force with the potential to accelerate innovation and transform economies. However, its benefits remain disproportionately concentrated among a small number of advanced economies, potentially entrenching new hierarchies of power in the global tech order. Even as AI is projected to add US$15.7 trillion to the global Gross Domestic Product by 2030, North America, China, and Europe are estimated to capture over 84 percent of these gains.
As the world begins to view AI as a defining element of national power, countries have entered a new phase of competition over AI hardware, software, and the data that powers it. As a result, the global landscape is marked by competing ambitions, rising trade barriers, and a scramble to secure control over data. This creates a skewed global ecosystem where a small number of countries dominate both innovation and governance, leveraging their access to compute, data, and capital.
India enters 2026 at a crucial stage where its growing domestic capabilities in AI, coupled with its global leadership roles, position it to shape how AI is responsibly governed and deployed for sustainable growth.
As such, India enters 2026 at a crucial stage where its growing domestic capabilities in AI, coupled with its global leadership roles, position it to shape how AI is responsibly governed and deployed for sustainable growth. The year 2026 brings together India’s multilateral leadership and agenda-setting roles, including its hosting of the India-AI Impact Summit in February 2026 and its assumption of the BRICS Presidency. This creates space for India to advance development-oriented approaches to AI cooperation, using AI as both a lever to build technological autonomy and a tool for inclusive growth.
The rapid advancement and widespread adoption of AI threaten to reshape the balance of power among nations, leading many to liken the global contest over its control to a new ‘technological arms race’. The race now underpins economic competitiveness, industrial policy, and even national security. The ability to train and deploy advanced AI models increasingly depends on access to costly computing infrastructure, vast datasets, and deep pools of venture investment, causing the social and economic benefits of AI to remain geographically concentrated in the Global North.
In the Global North, the United States (US) leads the field in AI chip production, raw compute capacity, global cloud infrastructure, and foundation model development, powered by deep private investment, patent ownership, and a strong venture ecosystem. Where the US leads on infrastructural capacity, the European Union has positioned itself as a norm-setter and regulatory power, aiming to set global standards through its rights-based and transparency-driven frameworks. China, meanwhile, is investing heavily in domestic AI ecosystems, integrating state-led research with industrial application, undeterred by the semiconductor export restrictions imposed by the US since 2018.
The United States (US) leads the field in AI chip production, raw compute capacity, global cloud infrastructure, and foundation model development, powered by deep private investment, patent ownership, and a strong venture ecosystem.
With these countries occupying a disproportionate share of AI chips, servers, high-performance computing systems, data centres, and capital, much of the Global South faces structural barriers to meaningful participation in the AI economy. These trends risk reinforcing patterns of digital dependency, where developing countries are relegated to becoming passive adopters and consumers of innovation rather than co-creators and norm-setters of the global tech transformation. This underscores the need for a collective Global South AI vision, grounded in shared developmental priorities that strengthens their participation in innovation and governance.
A shared Global South vision for AI should identify and account for differences across economies in AI exposure (exposure of a country’s occupational structure to AI automation/augmentation), preparedness (institutional and policy readiness to adopt/integrate AI), and access (including access to hardware and data centres), while focussing on building institutional capacity, digital infrastructure, skills, and equitable access to compute and data. Such an approach can help ensure that AI adoption supports productivity and inclusion, rather than deepening structural and geopolitical inequalities.
India has effectively addressed these challenges by implementing AI solutions across healthcare, agriculture, and public service delivery to over 1.4 billion citizens. India has also demonstrated strong international leadership in technology governance and appears well-positioned to champion an agenda for the Global South that aligns development priorities with responsible AI deployment. During its G20 Presidency in 2023, it championed Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) as a global public good to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, as co-chair of the Paris AI Action Summit in February 2025, India advanced the global dialogue on responsible AI governance.
India’s emphasis on institutional capacity, DPI, skills, and governance directly addresses the determinants that shape AI outcomes in the Global South. This is reinforced by its domestic efforts to build a scalable and inclusive AI ecosystem. As of October 2025, India's AI infrastructure is supported by an INR 10,300 crore investment under the IndiaAI Mission, which aims to deploy 38,000 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and establish 600 AI Data Labs to boost innovation. The government has also established three Centres of Excellence to encourage research-driven innovation in healthcare, agriculture, and sustainable cities. As India works to build an inclusive AI ecosystem, its AI-focussed talent base is also expected to grow from 600,000 to 1.25 million by 2027.
These capabilities position India to steer the global discourse towards developing and deploying AI for economic development and social good, democratising AI resources, strengthening joint research and capacity-building, harmonising AI safety and governance standards, and expanding collective access to AI infrastructure and talent.
At a time when the global AI ecosystem remains fragmented and heavily concentrated in a few advanced economies, the Summit positions India to shift the international conversation towards implementation, capacity-building, and development-aligned outcomes for all.
India’s upcoming BRICS presidency and India-AI Impact Summit can function as platforms to channel collective intent into structured cooperation through joint investments, partnerships, and capacity-building initiatives. Notably, the AI Impact Summit 2026, anchored by the mantra — From Vision to Action — reflects India’s intent to move beyond declarations to deliverables. At a time when the global AI ecosystem remains fragmented and heavily concentrated in a few advanced economies, the Summit positions India to shift the international conversation towards implementation, capacity-building, and development-aligned outcomes for all. Grounded in the principles of ‘People, Planet and Progress’, the Summit seeks to advance practical cooperation on infrastructure, human capital, governance, and ethical deployment.
These efforts can help foster the responsible development, deployment, and use of AI technologies, while ensuring they reflect the priorities of the Global South. Consequently, the Summit will serve as a critical test of whether shared principles can be translated into scalable solutions for the Global South so as to harness the power of AI for inclusive, sustainable growth for all.
Arshia Roy is a Research Intern at the Observer Research Foundation.
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