At the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20, 2026, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw challenged the notion of India being a second-tier player in the global artificial intelligence landscape, asserting that the nation firmly belongs in the "first league" of AI nations. Vaishnaw directly addressed IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, who had suggested that India lagged behind the US and China in AI development.
Vaishnaw countered this assessment by highlighting India's comprehensive strategy across five layers of AI architecture: applications, models, chips, infrastructure, and energy. He emphasized that India is simultaneously working on all these layers, demonstrating the country's commitment to building capabilities across the entire AI value chain.
The Minister cited Stanford University rankings, which place India third globally in AI preparedness and penetration, and second in AI talent, as evidence supporting his position. He questioned the IMF's assessment criteria and stated that India should be viewed as "clearly in the first group" of AI nations.
Vaishnaw emphasized that India's strengths lie not only in its software talent but also in its growing capabilities across data, compute infrastructure, and large-scale real-world applications. He pointed to India's digital transformation over the past decade, with platforms like Aadhaar and UPI creating a strong foundation for AI adoption. These systems generate vast volumes of anonymized data and use cases that allow AI models to be deployed and refined in ways few other economies can replicate.
India's AI strategy focuses on widespread adoption rather than solely building large-scale models. Vaishnaw projected that India would become the largest global supplier of AI-driven services by understanding enterprise-level needs and deploying solutions to improve productivity. He argued that return on investment comes from deploying lower-cost solutions rather than creating very large models, noting that 95% of work can happen with models of 20 billion to 50 billion parameters, which India already possesses and is actively deploying across sectors.
To address GPU scarcity, the government has established a public-private partnership providing a common national compute facility of around 38,000 GPUs. This subsidized resource is available to students, researchers, startups, and innovators at roughly one-third the global cost.
Vaishnaw also advocated a "techno-legal" approach to AI governance, stressing that regulation must be backed by robust technical tools to mitigate harms such as bias and deepfakes. He revealed ongoing Indian efforts to develop court-admissible deepfake detection systems, bias mitigation techniques, and proper model unlearning before enterprise deployment.
By positioning India as a top-tier AI economy, Vaishnaw signaled the government's intent to shape global conversations on artificial intelligence and underline India's ambition to be a creator, not just a consumer, of advanced AI technologies. He reiterated that India does not view AI only as a productivity tool for businesses but as a transformative technology that can improve governance, healthcare, education, and agriculture.
