India Bets on Affordable, Scalable AI—Not Model Size—at WEF Davos 2026

Addressing questions on AI geopolitics and global alignments, Shri Vaishnaw stated unequivocally that India belongs to the first group of AI nations.

India is positioning itself as a first-tier global AI nation by focusing on scale, affordability, and real economic returns, rather than a race for the largest models, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw said at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos on 20 January 2026.

Speaking during a high-profile panel titled “AI Power Play, No Referees”, the Minister laid out India’s distinctive approach to artificial intelligence—one centred on large-scale AI diffusion, enterprise productivity, and techno-legal governance.

India’s AI Strategy: Diffusion Over Dominance

Addressing questions on AI geopolitics and global alignments, Shri Vaishnaw stated unequivocally that India belongs to the first group of AI nations. He explained that AI capability rests on five layers—applications, models, chips, infrastructure, and energy—and India is actively building strength across all five.

“At the application layer, India will probably be the biggest supplier of services to the world,” he said, adding that AI returns come from enterprise deployment and productivity gains, not from building ultra-large models alone.

The Minister noted that nearly 95% of real-world AI use cases can be solved using models in the 20–50 billion parameter range, many of which India already has and is deploying across sectors such as governance, healthcare, industry, and services.

Rethinking AI Power and Economics

Cautioning against equating AI leadership with ownership of massive frontier models, Shri Vaishnaw pointed out that such models are economically fragile and geopolitically vulnerable.

“Very large models can be switched off—and may even create economic stress for their developers,” he observed.“The economics of what I call the fifth industrial revolution will come from ROI: the lowest-cost solution delivering the highest return.”

He added that effective AI deployment increasingly relies on CPUs, smaller models, and emerging custom silicon, reducing dependence on any single country and challenging the idea of AI dominance through scale alone.

Public Compute at National Scale

Drawing parallels with India’s Digital Public Infrastructure success, the Minister highlighted the Government’s push to democratise AI access.

To address GPU scarcity—a global bottleneck—India has adopted a public-private partnership model, empanelling around 38,000 GPUs as a shared national compute facility. The facility is government-enabled and subsidised, offering compute access at nearly one-third of global market costs to students, startups, researchers, and innovators.

Four Pillars of India’s AI Playbook

Shri Vaishnaw outlined four core pillars guiding India’s AI strategy:

• A common national compute facility via PPP

• A free bouquet of AI models covering most practical needs

• Large-scale skilling, with programmes targeting 10 million people trained in AI

• Enabling India’s IT industry to pivot toward AI-driven productivity for domestic and global enterprises

Techno-Legal Governance, Not Regulation Alone

On AI regulation, the Minister advocated a techno-legal governance framework, arguing that laws alone are insufficient to address harms such as bias and deepfakes.

“Deepfake detection systems must reach accuracy levels that can stand scrutiny in courts,” he said, noting that India is actively developing AI tools for deepfake detection, bias mitigation, and controlled model unlearning before enterprise deployment.

Global Voices on the Panel

The discussion was moderated by Ian Bremmer, President and Founder of Eurasia Group. Other panellists included Brad Smith (Microsoft), Kristalina Georgieva (IMF), and Khalid Al-Falih (Saudi Arabia), placing India’s AI vision at the centre of global economic and geopolitical debates.

Call to Action: Build for Scale, Not Spectacle

India’s message from Davos is clear: the next phase of AI will be won by those who can deploy it cheaply, responsibly, and at population scale.

For AI startups, enterprise software firms, semiconductor designers, system integrators, and global investors, India is positioning itself as the world’s largest testbed for ROI-driven, governance-ready AI—not just innovation in labs, but impact in the real economy.