This week, New Delhi hosted the India AI Impact Summit 2026, which attracted many participants from the AI industry and politicians from different countries. They concluded deals and discussed the prospects for the development of the most important technology of recent years. The artificial intelligence market is developing rapidly, and important news about it appears regularly.
Finam has compiled the most notable events in the world of artificial intelligence that took place in February 2026.
The AI revolution “with a human face” and the disappearance of IT services
During the India AI Impact Summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the artificial intelligence revolution must be ethical, human-centered, and take into account the interests of the Global South. According to the Indian leader, it is important to prevent countries that are leaders in the AI market from using residents of less developed countries to collect information and train their linguistic models without giving anything in return.
India, with a population of 1.4 billion, is considered one of the most technologically advanced countries in the Global South. In response, French President Emmanuel Macron stressed that no country in the world should become merely a market for AI models and a source of data collection on its citizens. The summit participants concluded that transparent international cooperation is necessary for the technological development of all countries. With its large market and population, India is attractive to tech giants developing artificial intelligence, so its focus on technology is more than justified.
One of the main humanitarian tasks remains reducing inequality between rich and poor regions with the help of AI. Modi wants the artificial intelligence revolution to reach the most remote corners of the country and improve the quality of life for all people. The Indian government has even launched one of the most ambitious vocational training programs so that the population can master new technologies and work in new ways. According to Modi, artificial intelligence should not replace people, but make them more efficient.
Tech billionaire Vinod Khosla has a different opinion. In an interview with the Hindustan Times, he said that in a decade and a half, India could become the world's largest exporter of AI goods and services. However, the labor market will change significantly. According to the billionaire, most IT services and business process outsourcing will almost certainly disappear within the next five years. AI will be followed by robots, whose labor will cost $2-3 per hour instead of $20, allowing them to perform most human tasks more easily and cheaply than humans.
Microsoft has promised to invest $50 billion in AI development in the Global South
In addition to discussions about the prospects of AI, the India AI Impact Summit became a platform for American technology companies to announce deals in India. For example, it was announced that OpenAI is collaborating with India's Tata Group to create infrastructure with a capacity of up to 1 gigawatt, which could potentially cost tens of billions of dollars.
Nvidia said it is working with regional service providers to expand AI infrastructure in India. Google DeepMind announced a partnership with Indian government agencies to promote scientific and educational initiatives in the field of AI.
The main scandal was the absence of Bill Gates, who was supposed to speak at the India AI Impact Summit but withdrew due to news of his connection to the late criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
Nevertheless, during the summit, Microsoft announced that it plans to invest $50 billion in the development of artificial intelligence in the Global South by the end of the decade. This is the largest investment in AI announced in recent times.
AI Buffett and virtual copies of celebrities
Meanwhile, a new trend is gaining popularity on the internet: communicating with AI celebrities created using technology based on collecting all known data about a person, their views on various topics, and their life and business philosophies. In particular, investors seek financial advice from an AI copy of the legendary “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett, who retired at the end of last year. Elon Musk is also popular among users, with whom novice businessmen like to consult on various issues. However, as experts warn, the “Buffett bot” can tell you what Warren Buffett said about value investing in 1985 or 2008, but it cannot tell you what the legendary investor thinks about a specific market change that occurred this morning. An AI bot is a library of all the past thoughts of a famous person, and it cannot be used to make predictions about the future, like Buffett, or analyze your own business with Musk's bot.
Similarly, users can communicate with virtual copies of famous people from the past, but they will only be able to respond within the limits of their own time and expertise. It is pointless to ask Plato, for example, what he thinks about the development of artificial intelligence, since such technologies did not exist in the great philosopher's time.
The new “ChatGPT killer” - Qwen from Alibaba
It was recently announced that the Chinese corporation Alibaba has released a new open-source generative artificial intelligence model called Qwen. It has already been dubbed the “ChatGPT killer” because Qwen's creators focused on the test results of their American competitors, GPT-5.2 and Claude 4.5. According to experts, Qwen can compete with leading AI manufacturers not only in terms of product cost but also in terms of performance. The Chinese model already outperforms its main competitors in terms of information search, reasoning, and following instructions.
For companies, this parity in performance suggests that open models are becoming promising candidates for solving problems related to core business logic and complex logical reasoning, and can be used not only in low-risk situations. This means that the AI race is entering a new phase. Who will dominate the future: the paid AI flagships of American big tech companies or free alternatives such as DeepSeek and Qwen? Time will tell, but for now, competition in the multi-billion dollar AI market is only intensifying.
