Brazil's President Lula da Silva has arrived in New Delhi, joining Emmanuel Macron, Pedro Sanchez and other leaders. Meanwhile, Google and Nvidia touted their Indian expansion plans at the AI Impact Summit 2026.Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was given the red carpet treatment on arrival in New Delhi on Wednesday, as he heads to the AI Impact Summit 2026.

Also Read | Galgotias University Exits AI Summit Expo 2026 After Robodog Controversy; Tenders Apology, Says Professor Neha Singh Was 'Ill-Informed'.

Lula is traveling with more than a dozen ministers and a large business delegation including CEOs of leading Brazilian companies, as he seeks to intensify trade ties with the world's most populous country.

Also Read | Delhi Air Pollution: Stage II GRAP Curbs Revoked in NCR As National Capital AQI Improves.

"India and Brazil share a close and multifaceted relationship," Indian Foreign Ministery spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement.

India took over the presidency of the BRICS bloc from Brazil this year. Lula's visit follows a July 2025 visit to Brasilia by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the first by an Indian prime minister in more than 50 years.

Lula will attend the New Delhi AI Impact Summit on Thursday and is set for talks with Modi over the weekend.

Brazil sees India as an under-tapped market for exports including cotton, seeds, teak, soybean oil and other minerals, including the rare earths market crucial to various tech development projects that India's uneasy neighbor China dominates.

Which other world leaders are attending the Delhi summit?

French President Emmanuel Macron took center stage at the AI summit on Tuesday, when he and Modi launched a new helicopter assembly line as part of Modi's flagship "Make in India" project.

The facility is a cooperation between India's Tata Group and European aviation giant Airbus and is located in Vemagal in the southern state of Karnataka. It is expected to be operational by April of this year.

"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 trying to deepen economic ties after the EU and India signed a free trade deal in January which Modi touted as the "mother of all trade deals."

As part of the agreement, India will eliminate tariffs on aircraft, a change likely to please Airbus, while levies on most machinery will also be reduced.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is also expected at the AI Impact Summit this week. On Wednesday he was in Delhi's renowned Lodhi district with India's Culture and Tourism Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat surveying a street art project.

Some 20 heads of state and government in total are expected at the five-day event, which runs until Friday.

Google, Nvidia tout Indian investment and infrastructure plans

US tech giants also announced new Indian projects on Wednesday as industry leaders rushed to the fast-growing market.

Google's CEO Sundar Pichai told reporters that the company would build new subsea cables from India connecting to various parts of the world.

"India's going to have an extraordinary trajectory with AI and we want to be a partner," Pichai told reporters.

The company plans new direct undersea connections linking India to Singapore, South Africa and Australia, it said. This is part of Google's $15 billion (roughly €12.7 billion) project to construct the company's largest AI data center hub outside the US in the port city of Visakhapatnam in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh.

Meanwhile, California-based chip company Nvidia said it would team up with three Indian cloud computing providers to provide advanced processors for data centers that can train and run AI systems.

Mumbai cloud and data centre provider L&T said Wednesday it was teaming up with Nvidia to build what it touted as "India's largest gigawatt-scale AI factory".

A flurry of deals have been unveiled at the AI summit, with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw saying on Tuesday that India anticipate more than $200 billion in investments over the next two years, with roughly $90 billion already committed.

Robot dog IP theft uproar marrs opening

The massive event in New Delhi did face one minor scandal that grabbed headlines in India and beyond, however.

A private India university was kicked out of the event amid uproar after a staffer for the Galgotias University displayed a commercially available robotic dog manufactured in China and claimed it was the university's own innovation.

The claim was made in an interview with state-run broadcaster DD news, but internet users quickly identified the mechancial mutt as the Unitree Go2, sold by Chinese company Unitree Robotics at prices starting at $1,600. It's widely used in research and education.

Following online uproar over the professor's claim, Galgotias said 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

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 18, 2026 07:50 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).