Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva received a red carpet welcome in New Delhi on Wednesday as he arrived for the AI Impact Summit 2026. Traveling with more than a dozen ministers and a substantial business delegation, including CEOs of leading Brazilian firms, Lula aims to boost trade ties with India.
“India and Brazil share a close and multifaceted relationship,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said. India took over BRICS presidency from Brazil this year, and Lula’s visit follows Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s July 2025 trip to Brasilia—the first by an Indian prime minister in over 50 years. Lula will attend the AI Impact Summit on Thursday and is due to hold talks with Modi over the weekend.
Brazil views India as an under‑tapped market for exports such as cotton, seeds, teak, soybean oil and minerals, including rare earths crucial for tech projects—a sector where China remains dominant.
Which other world leaders are attending the Delhi summit?
French President Emmanuel Macron was a key presence on Tuesday, when he and Modi inaugurated a new helicopter assembly line under Modi’s “Make in India” initiative. The facility, a collaboration between India’s Tata Group and Airbus, is in Vemagal, Karnataka, and is expected to begin operations by April. “Our collaboration with India is a win‑win situation,” said Jocelyn Gaudin, head of Airbus’s engineering and innovation centre in Bengaluru.
European countries and India are seeking deeper economic ties after the EU and India signed a free trade deal in January, hailed by Modi as the “mother of all trade deals.” As part of the agreement, India will remove tariffs on aircraft—likely benefiting Airbus—and reduce levies on most machinery. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is also expected at the summit; on Wednesday he visited Delhi’s Lodhi district with India’s culture and tourism minister to view a street art project.
Some 20 heads of state and government are expected at the five‑day event, which runs through Friday.
Google, Nvidia tout Indian investment and infrastructure plans
US tech firms used the summit to announce new investments. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company will build new subsea cables linking India to Singapore, South Africa and Australia. “India’s going to have an extraordinary trajectory with AI and we want to be a partner,” Pichai said. The cables form part of Google’s $15 billion plan to develop its largest AI data‑centre hub outside the US in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
Nvidia said it will partner with three Indian cloud providers to supply advanced processors for data centres to train and run AI systems. Mumbai cloud and data‑centre provider L&T announced a tie‑up with Nvidia to build what it called “India’s largest gigawatt‑scale AI factory.” IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Tuesday that India expects more than $200 billion in investments over the next two years, with about $90 billion already committed.
Robot dog IP theft uproar mars opening
The summit also faced a minor scandal. Galgotias University was expelled from the event after a staffer presented a commercially available Chinese robotic dog and claimed it as the university’s own invention. Internet users identified the device as the Unitree Go2, sold by Unitree Robotics and commonly used in research and education. Galgotias later clarified that while it did not build the machine, “what we are building are minds that will soon design, engineer, and manufacture such technologies.”
Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko