New Delhi : The AI-India Impact summit on Thursday witnessed the welcome of high profile heads of state by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Speaking at the summit, Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday outlined India's comprehensive five-layer artificial intelligence strategy at the first global AI Summit hosted in the country, calling it the "biggest AI summit so far" with participation from 118 countries.
"Welcome to the first AI summit in the global south and the biggest AI summit so far. We have participation from 118 countries. Thank you all for making this summit a grand success...PM Narendra Modi believes that the true value of technology lies in ensuring that its benefits reach the masses. Our Prime Minister's vision is to democratize technology, deploy it at scale, make it accessible to all," Vaishnaw said.
Addressing heads of state, delegates, industry leaders, students and members of the media, Vaishnaw said artificial intelligence is a foundational technology that is already transforming how people work, learn and make decisions.
"AI is a foundational technology transforming work and decision-making, and the Prime Minister's vision is to democratise and scale it so its benefits reach the masses. India is working across all five layers of the AI stack, focusing on real-world solutions in sectors like healthcare, agriculture, education, and finance. At the model layer, emphasis is placed on sovereignty, with the belief that over 90 per cent of use cases can be addressed through smaller, specialised models that deliver value at lower cost," he said.
The Minister highlighted that third layer is compute infrastructure, while the fourth layer is infrastructure and the fifth and final layer is energy. Vaishnaw underscored India's commitment to clean power, stating that more than 50 per cent of the country's installed power generation capacity now comes from renewable and clean energy sources.
Referring to a recent policy announcement during the Union Budget, he said India aims to attract global data to be processed within the country, delivering high-value digital services worldwide. He expressed optimism about significant investments in data centres in the coming months.
The Minister highlighted India's vision of placing Compute as a tool for doing good for its citizens. "We treat compute as a public good. In a public-private partnership, we have created a common compute platform where we are providing access to 38,000 GPUs at a very affordable rate for our startups, academia, researchers and students. We will be adding another 20,000 GPUs to this common compute platform," Vasihnaw said.
The Minister said this integrated, five-layer approach reflects India's ambition to emerge as a trusted and inclusive global AI hub while ensuring that technological progress remains aligned with social and economic development.