The landscape of artificial intelligence has reached a major inflection point, with India officially becoming the primary “engine room” for global AI development. According to figures released during the India AI Impact Summit 2026, India is now contributing significantly more data to systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT than the United States.
The Data Disparity: 33% More Than the US
Speaking at the summit on February 17, 2026, G20 Sherpa and former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant highlighted a startling shift in the global AI data pipeline.
“Today we in India… are providing more data [to ChatGPT] than the United States of America—33% more data than what the US does.” — Amitabh Kant
This surge is attributed to India’s massive, digital-first population and the rapid integration of AI into every facet of daily life, from education to small-scale commerce.
Why the Gap is Widening
Several factors have converged in early 2026 to push India’s data contribution ahead of the US:
| Factor | Impact on Data Generation |
| 100M Weekly Users | India is now the second-largest market globally for ChatGPT, with 100 million weekly active users. |
| Student-Led Growth | India holds the #1 rank globally for student usage of ChatGPT, generating massive volumes of queries related to learning, coding, and research. |
| Hyper-Growth in Mobile | The launch of ChatGPT Go (a low-cost/free localized tier) has brought tens of millions of first-time users into the ecosystem via smartphones. |
| Developer Hub | India’s massive IT workforce is increasingly using “Agentic AI” (like Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex-Spark) for real-time software development. |
The “Sovereign AI” Argument
The fact that India “feeds” more data to US-based LLMs has reignited the debate over Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and data sovereignty.
- Multilingual Shift: Indian leaders are pushing for AI to move beyond English-centric models. Because India provides the data “fuel,” there is a growing demand for these models to return the value by being natively fluent in all 22 scheduled Indian languages.
- IndiaAI Mission: The government is leveraging this data dominance to justify its ₹10,372 crore investment in local GPU clusters, aiming to ensure that Indian data is processed on Indian soil to benefit the local economy.
- Data as an Asset: Kant warned that if the Global South continues to provide the training data without receiving equitable benefits, it could lead to a “highly unequal global society.”
Market Comparison: India vs. US (Feb 2026)
While the US remains the leader in total traffic share (17.2%) due to its mature enterprise market, India (at 9.42% share) generates a higher volume of prompts and raw interaction data per user.
- India: 100 Million Weekly Active Users (Focus on learning, coding, and creative tasks).
- United States: ~137 Million Weekly Active Users (Focus on professional productivity and enterprise integration).
