Heading to India AI Impact Summit, Mozilla leaders call for investment in open source AI as a path to sovereignty
Mozilla is headed to New Delhi, India for the India AI Impact Summit 2026 next week with a message: Open Source is the path to both economic and digital sovereignty. Participating in dozens of events across the weeklong global forum, Mozilla leaders will make the case that a different kind of AI future is possible, and that global action is urgently needed to build a global AI ecosystem firmly grounded in the public interest.
“We’re at a crossroads for AI, where the world can continue to rent from a few big global corporations, or can take back control,” said Mark Surman, president of Mozilla. “To build national resilience and lower costs for their domestic stakeholders, countries should leave India ready to meaningfully invest in open source AI as a transformational solution.”
As part of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Mozilla is curating three official events that showcase its work to help build a more decentralized AI ecosystem. These include panels on the state of competition in AI, how open source AI can operationalize digital sovereignty, and the launch of a new convenings program aimed at Bollywood artists and filmmakers to explore the future of creativity in the age of AI. Mozilla will also host a community party for open source AI developers and founders.
At the Summit, Mozilla will speak to growing concerns about consolidation in the AI landscape, with just a few large global corporations essentially renting access to AI to the rest of the world. As more powerful AI systems are built and controlled behind closed platforms, users are left with little visibility into how these systems work and almost no ability to shape or govern them. This concentration of control means a small number of companies can decide who gets access to advanced AI, on what terms, and at what cost, with far-reaching consequences for innovation, public institutions, and digital sovereignty.
Mozilla believes this growing concentration of AI control threatens innovation, fair competition and public accountability. To counter this, Mozilla is investing in people, products, and organizations working to build a more open and human-centered AI ecosystem. Open source AI is a key part of this effort, providing practical, real-world infrastructure that allows systems to be inspected, improved locally, and governed in the public interest.
In partnership with G5A, Mozilla Foundation will also launch “The Origin of Thought” at the Summit — a new initiative to explore the intersections of culture and AI. The program will convene Bollywood artists, filmmakers, technologists, and cultural practitioners to help shape a nuanced, multi-faceted understanding of AI’s impact on our lives — not just as a tool but as a potential cultural force. The first taster session, held at The Oddbird Theatre in New Delhi, will feature filmmakers Nikkhil Advani and Shakun Batra.
“Creativity has always been how people make sense of change, long before policy frameworks or product roadmaps catch up. As AI reshapes how culture is made, shared, and remembered, we need spaces that slow the conversation down enough to ask what we’re protecting and why,” said Nabiha Syed, executive director of Mozilla Foundation. “The Origin of Thought brings artists, technologists, and decision-makers together to look beyond efficiency and novelty, and toward the human stakes of this moment. This work reflects our belief that imagination is a critical safeguard, not a luxury. When we center creative voices, we make it possible to build technologies that expand opportunity, dignity, and livelihoods.”
Through its participation at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Mozilla will reaffirm its commitment to building an AI future that is open, accountable, and shaped by the societies it is meant to serve, and to ensuring that open source AI remains a central pillar of global AI governance and innovation.
“Technology should adapt to humanity, not the other way around,” said Raffi Krikorian, CTO of Mozilla. “Across our entire portfolio, Mozilla is working to decentralize the future of AI — from building new tools for developers to supporting creators to building all levels of the open source AI ecosystem. India, with its incredible community of founders, startups, and developers, knows firsthand that open source AI is where innovation is going next.”
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