Feb 19, 2026

AI News Roundup: India Hosts the Global South's First AI Summit as Hundreds of Billions Flow Into the Industry

The India AI Impact Summit 2026 opened in New Delhi today, and it wasn’t just another tech conference. It was the first global AI summit hosted in the Global South, and the sheer concentration of power in one room — Modi, Macron, Altman, Amodei, Hassabis, Pichai, Ambani — turned Bharat Mandapam into the center of the AI universe for a day. The announcements that followed were staggering: hundreds of billions in new commitments, a record-shattering funding round, and one very awkward group photo.

Here’s everything that matters from February 19, 2026.

The Big Story: India’s AI Moment

PM Modi opened the summit with his “MANAV Vision” for human-centric AI development, urging the global community to prioritize the Global South in AI governance. The speech set the tone — this wasn’t a Silicon Valley conference transplanted to Delhi. It was a deliberate statement that AI’s future will be shaped by more than a handful of Western companies.

The investment pledges backed up the rhetoric. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance committed $110 billion over seven years to build AI computing infrastructure across India, including multi-gigawatt data centers in Jamnagar with 120+ MW expected online this year. Sundar Pichai announced Google’s $15 billion investment in India over 2026-2030, centered on a full-stack AI hub in Visakhapatnam partnering with AdaniConnex and Airtel. And Tata Group and OpenAI struck a deal to build 100MW of AI data center infrastructure in India, scalable to 1GW.

Then there was the group photo. Sam Altman and Dario Amodei refused to hold hands with PM Modi and other tech leaders, raising fists instead. The moment went viral instantly — a physical manifestation of the deepening OpenAI-Anthropic rivalry that no PR team could smooth over.

Today’s Top Stories

OpenAI’s Funding Round on Track to Top $100 Billion

OpenAI is close to finalizing the first phase of a record-breaking raise that will likely bring in more than $100 billion. The overall valuation could exceed $850 billion. The investor list reads like a who’s who of tech: Amazon (up to $50B), SoftBank (up to $30B), Nvidia (~$20B), and Microsoft. These are numbers that would have been unthinkable for a private company two years ago. OpenAI is now valued more than most publicly traded companies on Earth.

Amodei Warns of Autonomous Weapons as Pentagon Standoff Continues

Dario Amodei used his summit appearance to warn about autonomous weapons and mass surveillance — a pointed statement given that Anthropic’s $200M Pentagon contract remains “under review” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reportedly close to designating the company a “supply chain risk.” Separately, an Anthropic-backed PAC spent $450K on a New York congressional race supporting an AI safety regulation candidate.

Hassabis Says AGI Could Arrive “Within Five Years”

DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis warned of AI risks while calling for global cooperation, and put a timeline on AGI: “maybe within the next five years.” He called AI “the ultimate tool for accelerating scientific discovery” — a framing that positions DeepMind’s research-first approach as complementary to, rather than in competition with, the commercial race.

Moonshot AI Triples Valuation to $12 Billion

Beijing-based Moonshot AI is raising at least $700 million at a $12 billion valuation — nearly tripling from $4.3B just weeks ago. Led by 5Y Capital, Tencent, and Alibaba, the round signals that China’s AI startup scene is accelerating at a pace that matches (and in some cases outstrips) Silicon Valley.

Fed Governor Outlines Three AI Economy Scenarios — Including Mass Unemployment

Fortune published Fed Governor Michael Barr’s three scenarios for AI and the labor market: gradual adoption with retraining, a “jobless boom” where agentic AI renders large populations “essentially unemployable,” or an AI bust from energy shortages. The analysis noted early warning signs are already visible among young software developers. At the summit, Altman himself acknowledged real AI-driven job displacement, though he accused some companies of “AI washing” — blaming AI for layoffs they would have made anyway.

Quick Hits

Open Source: StepFun released Step 3.5 Flash, a 196B-parameter open-source model using sparse MoE architecture (11B active params per token) with 256K context, purpose-built for agentic tasks
Agentic Commerce: DBS Bank is piloting AI agents that autonomously make purchases using bank-issued credentials via Visa Intelligent Commerce
Manufacturing: Freeform raised $67M Series B from Nvidia’s NVentures and Founders Fund to scale its AI-powered laser 3D metal printing
AI Politics: Dueling PACs are battling over AI regulation ahead of the 2026 midterms, with a16z targeting the author of New York’s RAISE Act
Summit Comedy: An Indian university was expelled from the AI summit after presenting a $2,800 Chinese-made Unitree robot dog as its own in-house innovation
GPT-5 Sunset: Today is the final day for GPT-5 Pro and Enterprise access — usage has already shifted to GPT-5.2 with only 0.1% of users still on older models
Macron on AI: The French president called Europe a “safe space” for AI innovation and announced children’s AI protection as a G7 priority

The Scale of Ambition Is New

The India AI Impact Summit wasn’t just a symbolic moment for the Global South — it was a display of capital deployment at a scale the tech industry has never seen. Between Reliance’s $110B, Google’s $15B, OpenAI’s $100B+ raise, and Microsoft’s $50 billion pledge for AI inequality, we’re watching hundreds of billions of dollars pour into AI infrastructure in a single week. The geographic center of gravity is shifting too: India is now a primary destination for AI investment, not just a talent pipeline.

Meanwhile, the political fault lines are sharpening. Amodei is warning about autonomous weapons while his company faces retaliation from the Pentagon. PACs on both sides of AI regulation are spending millions ahead of the midterms. And a Fed governor is publicly gaming out a scenario where AI creates a “giant population of unemployable workers.” The money is flowing faster than ever, but so are the questions about what happens when it arrives.