100+ CEOs, 100+ countries, 15+ world leaders confirmed to attend AI Summit

More than 100 global CEOs and around 15 heads of state have confirmed their participation in the AI Impact Summit, scheduled to be held from February 15 to 20 in New Delhi, senior officials from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said at a press conference on Monday.

Among the confirmed political leaders attending the summit are French President Emmanuel Macron, Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Lammy. An official clarified that US President Donald Trump will not be attending, noting that his participation would have required months of advance planning. Chinese officials have also been invited, although their attendance has not yet been confirmed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Summit on February 19, after which he is expected to hold a CEOs roundtable the same day. Ahead of the summit, a gala dinner on February 18 will mark the first key event, hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attended by several heads of state and leaders participating in the summit.

On the industry side, a senior MeitY official said, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is “most likely” to attend, while discussions are currently underway with top executives from companies such as Meta and Microsoft. Officials also shared that there have already been over 500 confirmations from leading AI voices globally.

Confirmed attendees include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Chairman & MD of Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani, Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani, Cisco President Jeetu Patel, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, among others.

The summit’s co-host country is yet to be finalised. Traditionally, the country set to host the next global AI summit usually becomes the co-host. Countries that have shown interest in taking on this role include Switzerland, Estonia, Nigeria, the UAE and the United States, officials said.

The India-led AI Impact Summit will be the fourth in the series of global AI summits, following Bletchley Park in the UK in 2023, Seoul Summit in 2024 and this year’s Paris Summit in February, which India co-hosted. “The scale of many of these summits has grown considerably,” said S Krishnan, MeitY Secretary. “28 countries signed the declaration at Bletchley Park. By the time we came to France, it was about 100 countries participating in various forms. And that number we expect to better in February 2026.”

At AI summits, formal declarations, a non-binding joint statement where participating countries agree on shared priorities and areas of cooperation, have drawn varying levels of international backing. The Bletchley Declaration was signed by 28 countries, followed by 10 countries endorsing the Seoul Declaration. The Paris declaration was signed by 58 countries including India, though the US, and the UK abstained.

On the declaration to be signed in India, the Secretary said, “First and foremost, I think it’s important that we get everybody on board. The idea is to build some sort of a consensus around the key questions around AI which the entire world is travelling towards,” adding that the focus of global AI discussions has evolved since the first AI summit, shifting from concerns around control and risk to how AI can be used positively for development.

Any leadership declaration emerging from the India summit, he added, is expected to reflect this shift, with an emphasis on supporting inclusion, improving access to AI resources, and ensuring the benefits of AI are shared more widely, particularly across developing countries.

Officials said the summit is expected to produce over 15 “specific and tangible deliverables”, including a possible leadership declaration. Other key outcomes would include a shared global understanding on improving access to AI resources, as well as seven major documents being developed through open calls, reflecting contributions from stakeholders across countries and sectors.

These documents being prepared include a Global Tech Leaders’ Vision Document by Niti Aayog, an energy-focused study being developed with the International Energy Agency (IEA), and an International AI Safety Report by AI pioneer and “godfather of AI” Yoshua Bengio, who has presented similar report in the last three summits as well.

The secretary added over 150,000 in-person attendees are expected to come in the summit week. Officials said the event will also feature over 300 high-impact side events and aim to deliver at least 15 tangible and actionable outcomes.

In the build-up to the summit, in the last 140 days, around 300 pre-summit events have been organised, including 57 international events across more than 25 countries, covering over 100 cities. “Almost two events a day globally,” added MeitY Secretary. Another 150 events are still in the pipeline, with activities spread across 25 Indian states and Union Territories.

As part of international advocacy, MeitY officials said that they have held outreach events in cities such as New York, London, Nairobi, Cape Town and Kuala Lumpur, while domestic events were organised in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, among others.

The summit’s outcomes will be shaped through seven working groups, organised around three broad pillars: People, Planet and Progress. These groups will focus on themes such as safe and trusted AI, democratising AI resources, human capital development, economic growth and social good, inclusion, resilience, and scientific innovation.

The summit week agenda will include an Innovation Festival (February 15-20) at Central Park in Connaught Place, an AI Impact Expo at Bharat Mandapam (February 16-20), several flagship global challenges including AI for All, AI by Her, and YUVAi which will run from February 16-18. AI sessions, keynotes and panels and roundtables are expected to run from February 16 to 20. The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), a multi-stakeholder international initiative, will meet on February 20 on the sidelines of the AI Summit.