Middle East Asserts Strategic Clout at India AI Impact Summit 2026
The region’s relations with India have grown significantly in recent years, shifting from a traditional focus on energy and labor to a broader, more comprehensive alliance.
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The tech community came together at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 held in New Delhi from February 16-20. Amid keynotes, sessions, and big checks being drawn, the Middle East slowly strengthened its ties with India.
The Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, saw high-level delegations take the stage to share views on advanced technology and artificial intelligence (AI), discuss governance, ethics, and inclusion, and forge partnerships.
AI for Quality of Living
At a high-level panel, H.E. Omar Al Olama, UAE’s Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, shared his views on AI diffusion, national strategies for infrastructure and innovation, and global cooperation and regulation.
Olama highlighted the UAE’s vision to use AI to improve quality of life and benefit society, “We are a country that is blessed to be part of a country which has capabilities and infrastructure that is able to build AI and diffuse it across the society.”
He noted that, unlike other countries that prioritize political or economic gains, the UAE will translate AI into “every other domain in the future.”
He described India’s goal to lead in transparent AI and open-source systems as “reassuring.”
He was joined by Costa Rica’s Paula Bogantes Zamora, Minister of Science, Innovation, Technology, and Telecommunications; Sriram Krishnan, Senior Policy Advisor for AI at White House; and Dr. Samir Saran, President of the Observer Research Foundation.
Forging New Initiatives
On the sidelines of the summit, H.H. Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reaffirm the importance of the India-UAE Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
Notably, the two countries marked exactly four years of signing the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) on 18 February 2026.
The two leaders welcomed several new initiatives:
- They finalized a Memorandum of Understanding between India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the UAE’s Ministry of Health and Prevention to promote cooperation in health and medicine. This includes professional exchanges, research, digital health, pharmaceuticals, and new health technologies to benefit both countries.
- They also finalized a Term Sheet between the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, G42, and Mohamed Bin Zayed University of AI to deploy a supercomputer cluster in India..
- Additionally, the Abu Dhabi National Insurance Company will open an office in GIFT City, Gujarat.
Unifying International Efforts in AI
Saudi Arabia was represented at the summit by the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) president Abdullah Al-Ghamdi, along with a team that included Saudi Ambassador to India Haitham Al-Maliki.
During a high-level session on leveraging technology for people and the planet, Abdulrahman Habib, deputy chief strategy officer at SDAIA, stressed the importance of unifying international efforts to ensure the responsible and ethical use of AI.
Al-Ghamdi explained that the national AI strategy is built on three main pillars. “The first pillar focuses on building human capacity and enhancing readiness to engage with AI technologies…the second pillar centres on developing an integrated national AI ecosystem by strengthening advanced digital infrastructure…and the third pillar focuses on governance, aimed at ensuring responsible and measurable use of artificial intelligence.”
Advancement Guided by Ethical Principles
The Israeli delegation, led by Ilan Fluss, former Ambassador and EDTs Policy Coordinator at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, focused on strengthening India-Israel cooperation in AI, climate resilience, ESG investment, digital governance, and responsible innovation.
“At a time when artificial intelligence is reshaping the global order, India and Israel have a joint responsibility to lead with innovation guided by ethics. Our partnership demonstrates how advanced technology and human values can progress together,” he said in a statement.
Maya Sherman, Innovation Attaché at the Embassy of Israel, highlighted that both countries share a people-centric approach to technology. “Our cooperation in AI, climate innovation, and digital transformation is focused on real-world challenges — from resilient agriculture and future-ready skills to responsible AI applications,” she said.
Notably, the Embassy of Israel in India jointly held an India–Israel session with IIT Ropar at the summit.
Before the AI Impact Summit, Symbiosis International University Dubai and the Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi held a two-day event in Dubai on February 10-11. The Road to AI Impact Summit 2026 featured the launch of NANDA, a powerful 13-billion-parameter AI model developed with the UAE’s G42 Group and trained on one of the world’s top AI supercomputers, Condor Galaxy.
The Gulf region, apart from being a significant source of crude oil and fertilizers to India, is home to over 9 million Indian expatriates who send more than $50 billion in annual remittances.
India’s cooperation with the region has grown in recent years, moving beyond energy and labor to a broad strategic alliance focused on AI, digitalization, semiconductors, and space technology. This helps diversify economies beyond oil, with key partnerships in AI research, startup incubation like the India Startup Hub in Sharjah, and major infrastructure projects such as the IMEC.
