The world’s largest artificial intelligence summit opened to packed halls and long queues, as tech moguls, industry leaders, policymakers, founders, and technologists thronged the venue for the conference, where India is set to push for widening access to AI and seek international agreement on global AI commons. With huge billboards around the city welcoming delegates, speakers and guests at the AI Impact Summit, Bharat Mandapam saw long queues much before the conference opened at 09.30 hours, signalling the interest in the subject and the conference. The enthusiasm was high despite the fact that the high profile speakers – from Sundar Pichai of Alphabet to Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic – haven’t even arrived in the country. Their sessions start not before Wednesday (February 18, 2026). Final two days of the Summit – February 19 and 20 – will see more than 20 heads of state and government, including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, along with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, talking about the future of AI …