Davos. India’s role in Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Davos 2026 witnessed a heated debate when International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Kristalina Georgieva described India as a “second-tier AI power”. On his statement, Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnav gave a befitting reply from the stage itself, calling India a country included in the “first group” of AI.
In a panel discussion organized on the global impact of AI, the IMF Chief had said that countries like America, Denmark and Singapore are in the top group in AI, while he placed India in the second level. Although he also appreciated India’s long-term investment in IT, but said that India is not yet ahead in the matter of AI.
Responding immediately to this, Ashwini Vaishnav said, I do not know on what basis this classification of IMF is based, but the report of Stanford University places India at third place in the world in AI penetration, AI preparedness and AI talent. India ranks second in AI talent. In such a situation, it is not right to call India second-tier. India is clearly in the first group.
Vaishnav also clarified that success in AI does not come just by building very large models. He said that 95 percent of the work is done with models having 20 to 50 billion parameters and India has developed many such models, which are being implemented in various fields. This is increasing productivity, efficiency and effective use of technology. He said that India is continuously progressing in the five major layers of AI architecture – application, model, chip, infrastructure and energy. India has the potential to become the world’s largest service provider, especially in the application layer, where the highest return on investment can be achieved by providing AI solutions as per enterprise needs.
Ashwini Vaishnav said that India’s focus is on spreading AI on a large scale and not just on increasing the size. He also said that India is rapidly developing the semiconductor ecosystem, which includes all aspects from design to fabrication. Global companies like Google are expanding AI data centers in India and partnering with Indian startups.
