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India seeks to challenge AI dominance of US, China

India is pushing to open up access to AI at a global summit, according to a draft text seen by POLITICO.

By Pieter Haeck

Artificial intelligence should be available and affordable for countries around the world, according to the draft conclusions of an India-led global summit seen by POLITICO.

India, which is hosting the annual AI summit that kicked off Monday in New Delhi, is pushing to “democratize” the resources underpinning the technology, according to the conclusions — a sign it wants to address the U.S. behemoths that currently dominate the field.

The language is likely to be opposed by the United States and China, home to the world’s leading AI companies. The two global powers failed to sign up to the last summit declaration in Paris in 2025.

It will continue to be negotiated ahead of Thursday, when world leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron will attend the summit — the third event after leaders began a global effort to discuss the regulation and safety of artificial intelligence in London in 2023.

It’s important to enhance the “affordability of and access to AI resources ... critical to enabling all countries to develop, adopt and deploy AI,” the undated draft declaration reads.

The summit organizers conveyed a similar message on the ground around the summit venue, where on Sunday billboards read “For India, AI stands for all inclusive,” accompanied by a picture of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

They lambast the widening global AI gap on the summit website, “with AI resources and capabilities concentrated among select nations and corporations.”

“Our primary focus is on applications, which links up to the democratization of artificial intelligence,” Saurabh Kumar, the ambassador of India to the EU, told a POLITICO event in early February. “How can we bring benefit [to] the population at large?”

The draft declaration mentions a charter for the democratic diffusion of AI “to promote access to foundational resources.” It also backs open-source AI systems that are publicly available for use and modification, such as Meta’s Llama, France’s Mistral and China’s DeepSeek.

“Open-source AI applications and other accessible AI approaches, where appropriate, and wide-scale diffusion of AI use cases can contribute to scalability, replicability, and adaptability of AI systems across sectors,” the draft declaration reads.

Some critics have dismissed India’s AI democratization pitch as mere branding, arguing the country’s actions in the run-up to the summit tell another story.

Pushing for democratization of the technology is “good optics,” Amber Sinha, executive director of digital rights group EDRi, told POLITICO. While it positions India as the leader of the Global South, the group of developing countries, in the global AI race, “I don’t think that necessarily leads to a particular democratic vision on AI, and I also don’t think that it necessarily pitches India against U.S. Big Tech,” Sinha said.

“A large part of the pitch for this AI summit is about seeking investments,” she added.

Several U.S. Big Tech AI front-runners, including OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, are sending top-level executives to New Delhi this week and are expected to give an update on their investments and work in India.

Indian companies are not turning their backs on U.S. Big Tech, according to Shweta Rajpal Kohli, president and CEO of the India Startup Policy Forum.

“When I talk to some of the founders and I [ask]: Are you worried about dominance? They [reply]: Can you get us a meeting with OpenAI? Can you get me into a room with Nvidia?” Rajpal Kohli told a panel Monday.