What India needs for building AI strength

The India AI Impact Summit is bringing together figures such as Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman and Emmanuel Macron alongside researchers, entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers.

- Siddharth Pai

The optics matter.Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not simply another technology wave but a structural reordering of economic and institutional power. When leaders of global technology firms and heads of State converge in India to discuss AI, the implication is clear: India is central to how AI will scale across large, complex societies.

India approaches this moment with real strengths. By most composite measures of talent, research output, startup dynamism and policy orientation, it stands behind only the US and China in overall AI capacity. That position reflects a vast engineering workforce, globally integrated technology companies and a State that has shown unusual competence in building digital public infrastructure. Yet being third in a capital-intensive race offers no guarantee of durable advantage. The frontier of Al is shaped by actors who can mobilise extraordinary financial resources, control advanced semiconductor supply chains and integrate hardware with software at scale. Talent does not neutralise structural asymmetries in capital.