All the important news from the ongoing India AI Impact Summit
Source: TechCrunch
Image Credits: Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch
9:00 AM PST · February 22, 2026
With an eye toward luring more AI investment to the country, India is hosting a four‑day AI Impact Summit this week. Executives from major AI labs and Big Tech—including OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and Cloudflare—along with heads of state will attend.
The event, which expects 250,000 visitors, will feature:
- Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
- Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani
- Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to deliver a speech with French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday.
Below are the key updates from the summit:
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India earmarks $1.1 billion for its state‑backed venture‑capital fund, which will invest in AI and advanced‑manufacturing startups.
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said India has >100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, second only to the U.S, and the most student users.
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Blackstone acquired a majority stake in Indian AI startup Neysa as part of a $600 million equity raise. Other investors include Teachers’ Venture Growth, TVS Capital, 360 ONE Asset, and Nexus Venture Partners. Neysa plans an additional $600 million in debt and to deploy >20,000 GPUs.
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Bengaluru‑based C2i, building power solutions for data centers, raised $15 million Series A from Peak XV, with participation from Yali Deeptech and TDK Ventures.
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HCL CEO Vineet Nayyar warned that Indian IT firms will focus on profits rather than job creation amid AI‑driven disruption concerns.
- Related: Indian IT stocks dip amid AI‑related sell‑off.
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Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures) said IT services and BPOs could “almost completely disappear” within five years because of AI, urging 250 million young Indians to sell AI‑based products worldwide.
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AMD is partnering with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to develop rack‑scale AI infrastructure based on AMD’s Helios platform.
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Anthropic announced its first Indian office in Bengaluru and noted India is the second‑largest Claude user after the U.S.
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Anthropic + Infosys partnership will deploy Claude models and tools (e.g., Claude Code) to Indian enterprises, starting with the telecommunications sector and a dedicated Anthropic Center of Excellence.
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Sarvam teased its upcoming smart‑glasses, Sarvam Kaze, after releasing several AI models (dubbing, speech‑to‑text, text‑to‑speech, OCR).
Drop 12/14: Models, products, impact – today something different, very different. Launching Sarvam Kaze, our foray into getting our models into your hands with our devices – designed and built here in India!
pic.twitter.com/8RnqO16Idg – Pratyush Kumar (Feb 17, 2026) -
Adani pledged $100 billion to build AI data centers powered by renewable energy in India by 2035, which could spur an additional $150 billion in related investments (servers, electrical infrastructure, sovereign cloud platforms, etc.).
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Cartesia (voice AI) is teaming up with India‑based orchestrator Blue Machines to deliver enterprise voice solutions with local data residency.
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Cohere Labs launched a family of multilingual open‑weight models supporting >70 languages, runnable on local devices, with region‑specific tuned variants.
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OpenAI announced two new Indian offices (Bengaluru & Mumbai) and a partnership with the Tata Group to deploy 100 MW of compute in India, with plans to scale to 1 GW.
India AI & Tech Highlights (Feb 2026)
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Tech Ministry: India’s tech minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the country wants to attract over $200 billion in investment for AI infrastructure in the next two years【TechCrunch – India bids to attract over $200B in AI infrastructure investment by 2028】(https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/17/india-bids-to-attract-over-200b-in-ai-infrastructure-investment-by-2028/).
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Emergent: The vibe‑coding startup announced it has reached $100 M in ARR and launched a mobile app【TechCrunch – Emergent hits $100M ARR eight months after launch, rolls out mobile app】(https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/17/emergent-hits-100m-arr-eight-months-after-launch-rolls-out-mobile-app/).
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Sarvam:
- Released two new open‑source models: Sarvam 30B and Sarvam 105B【TechCrunch – Indian AI lab Sarvam’s new models are a major bet on the viability of open‑source AI】(https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/18/indian-ai-lab-sarvams-new-models-are-a-major-bet-on-the-viability-of-open-source-ai/).
- Announced a partnership with Qualcomm, HMD and Bosch to deploy its models to devices such as smartphones, feature phones, cars, laptops and smart‑glasses.
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Gnani: Voice‑AI startup released a zero‑shot voice‑cloning TTS model Vachana, supporting 12 languages.
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BharatGen: The government‑backed AI consortium launched a 17 B‑parameter model Param 2, covering 22 languages.
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JioHotstar: The streaming service will use ChatGPT for conversational search and content discovery.
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Indus: Sarvam launched its ChatGPT competitor “Indus”, supporting multiple Indian languages【TechCrunch – India’s Sarvam launches Indus AI chat app as competition heats up】(https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/20/indias-sarvam-launches-indus-ai-chat-app-as-competition-heats-up/).
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OpenAI: Reported that 18‑24‑year‑old users in India drive nearly 50 % of ChatGPT usage【TechCrunch – OpenAI says 18‑to‑24‑year‑olds account for nearly 50 % of ChatGPT usage in India】(https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/20/openai-says-18-to-24-year-olds-account-for-nearly-50-of-chatgpt-usage-in-india/).
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Tech Mahindra: Released an 8 B‑parameter Hindi‑oriented model for educational use cases.
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UAE‑India Supercomputer: UAE’s G42 teamed up with U.S. chip maker Cerebras to deploy 8 exaflops of compute in India via a supercomputer【TechCrunch – UAE’s G42 teams up with Cerebras to deploy 8 exaflops of compute in India】(https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/20/uaes-g42-teams-up-with-cerebras-to-deploy-8-exaflops-of-compute-in-india/). The project also involves Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C‑DAC).
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Sam Altman (India AI Summit):
- Dismissed concerns about AI’s water usage as “totally fake,” while acknowledging past reliance on evaporative cooling in data centers.
- Remarked that humans also consume a lot of energy growing up, calling arguments about ChatGPT’s power consumption “unfair.”
- Quoted: “It takes like 20 years of life and all the food you eat during that time before you get smart.”
Topics
(list omitted – as originally presented)
About the Author
Ivan Mehta covers global consumer‑tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based in India and has previously written for publications including HuffPost and The Next Web.
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