AI impact summit 2026 positions India as voice of the global south

By Puja Sharma

At a time when artificial intelligence is shifting from promise to power, India’s first Global South–led AI Impact Summit signals something far bigger than another tech gathering. Hosted at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, the five-day event has brought together heads of state, regulators, CEOs, and researchers to debate what could define the next global order: who builds AI, who governs it, and who ultimately benefits.

The Prime of India set the tone at the inauguration, calling AI a “civilisational inflection point” and framing the technology as a tool for inclusion rather than domination. The messaging is deliberate. India wants to move beyond being a technology adopter to becoming a rule-shaper—especially for the Global South. That means pushing ethical guardrails, multilingual accessibility, and equitable innovation, while resisting the concentration of AI power in a handful of Western and Chinese ecosystems.

But ambition alone is not strategy. The real test lies in whether India—and emerging markets more broadly—can translate governance narratives into scalable, high-impact use cases. This is where financial services, arguably the most regulated and data-sensitive industry, becomes a proving ground.

As Raj Abrol, CEO of Galytix, noted during discussions around the summit: “The AI era of delivering real, measurable impact has truly arrived, and the opportunity for financial services firms has never been greater. The firms that will win are those building systems that deliver accurate decisions, not just fast ones, because in financial services, trust isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s everything. What concerns me is that too many providers are repackaging web-scraped LLMs as ‘AI agents’ that hallucinate, amplify bias, and create technical debt, putting banks and insurers at real risk when it comes to the decisions that matter most. The real opportunity lies in going deeper—embracing domain-specific AI built for financial services, with explainability at its core. That’s not just an edge. That’s a moat.”

His warning cuts to the heart of the global AI debate. The current wave of generative AI enthusiasm risks prioritising speed, scale, and investor hype over reliability and accountability. Nowhere is this more dangerous than in credit decisions, fraud detection, underwriting, and compliance. In these areas, hallucination is not a glitch—it is systemic risk.

The summit’s agenda reflects this tension. While global leaders such as Sundar Pichai of Google, along with executives from OpenAI and Microsoft, are addressing the future of agentic systems and autonomous decision-making, policymakers are increasingly focused on accountability, transparency, and safety. Discussions around age-based social media controls, digital identity, and AI governance highlight a growing recognition that unchecked deployment could deepen inequality rather than reduce it.

India’s domestic ecosystem is also under the microscope. Sovereign AI initiatives such as Sarvam AI and BharatGen aim to build language and cultural intelligence suited to local realities. Yet adoption across enterprises remains uneven, with most organisations still allocating a modest share of IT budgets to AI. The gap between experimentation and enterprise transformation persists.

Still, capital is flowing. Investments like Blackstone’s funding in Neysa and market momentum around firms such as Fractal Analytics suggest long-term confidence in India’s AI trajectory. Ultimately, the summit is less about technology and more about power. The question is not whether AI will reshape global finance, governance, and society—it already is. The real question is who defines the rules. If India succeeds, it could reshape AI governance through a lens of inclusion, sovereignty, and trust. If it fails, the future of AI may be written elsewhere.

For financial services, the message is clear: the next competitive edge will not come from faster algorithms, but from responsible, explainable, and domain-deep intelligence. In the AI era, trust will be the ultimate currency—and those who get it right will build not just platforms, but enduring moats.