Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw outlined India

AI Mission 2.0 during the India AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, marking a bold expansion of India's AI strategy. The five-day event, the first major global AI summit hosted in the Global South, concluded with a Leaders' Declaration and Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) Council meetings on February 20, drawing over five lakh visitors and securing $250 billion in infrastructure investment commitments. 

Vaishnaw emphasized scaling sovereign AI models, compute infrastructure, and safety measures to new heights. Mission 1.0 already expanded compute from 10,000 to 38,000 GPUs, with 20,000 more imminent, supporting 12 foundational models including Sarvam AI's 30B and 105B parameter LLMs optimized for Indian languages. These models rival global benchmarks at lower costs, positioning India among Stanford's top three AI nations with over $200 billion in projected investments.

Compute Expansion and Safety Institute Growth

India's shared compute pool now offers GPUs at ₹65 per hour, fueling R&D across chips, infrastructure, and applications without foreign dependencies. Vaishnaw highlighted Semiconductor Mission 2.0 to spawn 50 chip design houses, backed by clean energy initiatives. The AI Safety Institute, operating virtually with 12 networked institutes, advances responsible AI through academic collaborations to prevent misuse. This builds a full AI stack, from foundational models to scalable deployment. Stanford rankings underscore India's progress, with Mission 2.0 promising "a totally new level of models, common compute, [and] safety."

Last-Mile Diffusion for Inclusive Growth

Drawing parallels to India's rapid 5G rollout, Vaishnaw committed to democratizing AI beyond enterprises to MSMEs and every citizen. Plans include AI infrastructure and curricula in 500 universities, plus massive skilling in over 100 colleges to build talent pipelines. The minister stressed inclusive philosophy: "We will put the same effort in making AI benefit reach the last person in society like we did with 5G." This UPI-style playbook ensures last-mile adoption without elite restrictions.

Global Commitments and Frontier AI Framework

On February 19, Vaishnaw launched the New Delhi Frontier AI Impact Commitments, a voluntary pact signed by Indian firms like Sarvam AI, BharatGen, Gnani.ai, Soket, and global players. It mandates anonymized usage data for workforce policies and AI safety evaluations in underrepresented languages.

Vaishnaw called it unprecedented: "For the first time, all the big AI players came on the same stage and agreed." Hosted under IndiaAI Mission's "People · Planet · Progress" theme, the summit cements India's leadership in ethical, sovereign AI.