The multinational ai impact summit 2026, convened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on February 16 and attended by 20 heads of state and 500 global technology leaders from over 45 countries was much acclaimed. But it was also a timely reminder of the widening gap between India’s technological aspirations and the institutional foundations required to attain them.

Unlike its precursor IT revolution, developing national AI capability requires heavy investment in electric power generation, high-performance computing facilities, sovereign semiconductor supply chains, and robust higher education institutions (HEIs) with advanced applied research capabilities. In all these sectors, India lags far behind the United States and China which have been investing heavily in power generation, advanced ICT infrastructure, semiconductor development and research-intensive universities for several decades.

On the other hand, India’s 500 GW per annum installed power generation capacity is a fraction of America’s 1,250 GW and China’s 3,900 GW with our per capita consumption at 1,460 units, being half of Mexico’s. Lack of adequate and reliable power is likely to prove a huge impediment to operationalising AI data centres that require uninterrupted, high-quality electricity at enormous scale. Moreover, India also suffers a shortage of advanced computing and semiconductor hardware. AI runs on graphics processing units (GPUs) for which India is totally dependent on imports. India has deployed a mere 38,000 GPUs cf. China’s 115,000 and America’s 250,000.

The neglect of energy and computing infrastructure has been compounded by consistent underinvestment in research and development (R&D), particularly in universities. Total annual (public and private) expenditure on R&D has stagnated at under 1 percent of GDP for decades — far below the US (3.4 percent) and China (2.4 percent) with their substantially larger GDP. In AI development, despite its reputation as a global IT services powerhouse, India contributes a negligible fraction of the world’s AI research output. On the other hand, China’s published AI research papers match the combined output of the US, UK and EU.

Much of this research is emanating from Chinese universities — globally, higher education institutions (HEIs) form the backbone of AI innovation. Unfortunately, India’s globally low-ranked HEIs plagued by faculty shortages, pitiful research grants, poor infrastructure and excessive government regulation are nowhere near competing with their counterparts abroad.

While the AI Impact Summit 2026 has had the positive impact of highlighting the importance of India strengthening its sovereign AI ecosystem, it has also exposed lack of preparation. Especially the need to transform our HEIs into institutions competent to develop globally competitive STEM research professionals.