The world of artificial intelligence was about to shift on its axis. From February 16 to 20, New Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam hosted the India AI Impact Summit 2026. Led by the Government of India, it was not merely another technology conference. It became a policy‑led global assembly of AI pioneers and practitioners anchored on a transformative triad: People, Planet, Progress.
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As the first major global AI summit hosted in the Global South, the event marked a turning point in the global AI narrative, moving the conversation from abstract innovation to inclusive, responsible, and scalable impact.
The Right Place, The Right Time
A critical tension shaped many of the Summit’s discussions. Much of the developed world’s AI architecture had been built on assumptions of continuous connectivity, abundant cloud resources, and cost structures favouring centralised scale. India, like much of the Global South, operated under different realities. Connectivity remained uneven across vast geographies, and cloud inference costs, when scaled to billions of interactions, risked becoming unsustainable.
The Summit reframed the central question. It was not whether AI could be made powerful.It was whether AI could be made usable, at scale, under real‑world conditions.
This is where the conversations moved from abstraction to architecture. The consensus that emerged was clear: the future of AI did not lie in choosing between cloud and edge, but in transcending that binary. Cloud AI continued to play a critical role in training foundational models. Edge AI, however, proved essential for delivering intelligence that was accessible, responsive, and economically viable, whether for farmers seeking real‑time crop insights, frontline health workers accessing diagnostic support, or consumers engaging with AI in their own languages.
The Edge of Progress - Backed by Capital, Research, and Manufacturing
Qualcomm’s presence at the Summit reflected this architectural reality, supported by concrete, long‑term commitments.
During the Summit, Qualcomm announced a landmark commitment: Qualcomm’s commitment to invest up to $150 million through a new Strategic AI Venture Fund, aimed at accelerating India’s AI and deep‑tech startup ecosystem. Revealed through a high‑impact national broadcast on Power Breakfast with CNBC‑TV18 and followed by a coordinated national press rollout, the announcement underscored Qualcomm’s belief that India’s AI leadership would be built not only in laboratories, but through startups capable of scaling innovation.
This ecosystem‑first approach was reinforced by a strategic collaboration with the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), with Qualcomm committing up to ₹90 crore over five years to strengthen India’s mission‑driven research landscape. The collaboration positioned Qualcomm as a long‑term research and deep‑tech partner aligned with India’s national innovation roadmap, investing in foundational science, applied research, and future‑ready talent.
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At the same time, Qualcomm demonstrated its commitment to real‑world deployment and localisation. A newly announced collaboration with Tata Electronics to manufacture Qualcomm Automotive Modules in India marked a significant step toward localising advanced automotive technology production. The partnership reinforced India’s semiconductor manufacturing ambitions, expanded advanced packaging capabilities, and strengthened the country’s electronics and automotive ecosystem.
Together, these announcements reflected a coherent strategy: capital, research, and manufacturing working in concert to build durable AI infrastructure in India.
Full‑Stack AI Enablement for India’s Linguistic and Sectoral Diversity
One of the Summit’s clearest takeaways was that India’s AI future would be defined not just by scale, but by relevance, across languages, sectors, and regulatory environments.
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In this context, Qualcomm announced a collaboration with Sarvam AI to develop and deploy generative AI solutions tailored specifically for Indian languages and local use cases. The collaboration reinforced Qualcomm’s leadership across full‑stack AI enablement, spanning model optimisation, on‑device deployment, and inference across smartphones, PCs, wearables, XR, IoT, and automotive platforms.
This focus on localisation and edge optimisation extended into regulated, high‑trust sectors. Mihup also announced a collaboration with Qualcomm to develop multilingual, on‑device Voice AI solutions for the BFSI sector. The initiative highlighted Qualcomm’s leadership in secure, privacy‑preserving, on‑device intelligence, a capability increasingly critical for industries where data sovereignty, low latency, and compliance are non‑negotiable.
The Edge AI Studio: Intelligence With Intent
These themes came together at the Edge AI Studio, unveiled by Qualcomm in partnership with CNBC‑TV18 at Bharat Mandapam. More than an editorial installation, the Studio functioned as a live vantage point into the steady migration of intelligence from centralised cloud systems to distributed edge architectures.
Its placement was deliberate. Located alongside working groups focused on Safe and Trusted AI, Inclusion for Social Empowerment, and the Democratization of AI Resources, the Studio reflected a central policy insight that emerged from the Summit: where intelligence resides has profound economic, social, and geopolitical implications.
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By showcasing real‑world deployments, ecosystem partnerships, and policy‑aligned innovation, the Edge AI Studio demonstrated how distributed intelligence could serve as a foundation for inclusive growth, predictable economics, and sustainable AI adoption.
A Statement of Intent
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 concluded at a moment of global inflection. Nations around the world were grappling with both the promise and the responsibility of AI. What India brought to this global dialogue was a perspective grounded in scale, diversity, and purpose.
Qualcomm’s announcements and engagements throughout the Summit collectively articulated a clear point of view: the future of AI would be hybrid, edge‑enabled, secure, and locally relevant. It would be built through long‑term investment, deep research collaboration, local manufacturing, and ecosystems that empowered developers, startups, and institutions alike.
In retrospect, the Summit stood as a statement of intent, from India, and from partners such as Qualcomm, to shape the most defining technological transformation of our time with a focus on human and societal outcomes. What emerged from Bharat Mandapam was not just a vision of smarter machines, but of intelligence designed to arrive exactly where it was needed, when it was needed, and for whom it mattered most.
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