The Wrap | 14 - 20 Feb 2026
A weekly digest of what mattered in Asia’s tech stack
Editor’s Note: This week, Asia’s AI story was told through two showcases, one in India and one in China, and they shone a light on where the region is heading.
In India, the spotlight came through the AI summit week, with the country selling itself as a global AI hub. But the message was not only ambition. As the summit played out, the regulatory posture tightened in parallel, a reminder that scale comes with oversight.
In China, the Lunar New Year window and the Spring Festival Gala acted like a national distribution moment. AI and humanoid robots were placed on the main stage, not as a novelty but as a signal of where the country wants momentum to sit. Around it, the holiday period doubled as a live trial of how quickly AI can be pushed into everyday use.
Put together, these two moments made the subtext clear: the next phase of AI in Asia will be decided as much by distribution and governance as by model capability.
AI Impact Summit Week Signals India’s AI Ambition
India’s AI Impact Summit has become one of the week’s defining showcases, drawing global tech leaders to New Delhi and framing India as the next major theatre for AI adoption and governance.
The summit’s biggest announcements were about infrastructure and capacity, not a single product drop. Google rolled out a new India–US subsea cable initiative, launched a $30 million AI-for-Science Impact Challenge and a second $30 million challenge focused on AI for government innovation, and expanded its skilling push, including training aimed at public servants. Microsoft used the week to reinforce its access-and-adoption pitch, saying it is on pace to invest $50 billion by 2030 to expand AI access across the “Global South.” On domestic capacity, Yotta announced a $2 billion investment in Nvidia’s latest chips to build a major AI computing hub, including a New Delhi “supercluster” targeted to go live by August 2026. The Indian government also underlined its own compute intent, announcing plans to add 20,000 GPUs under its national AI push.
Running in parallel with the summit, though, was the sharper signal: a tightening compliance posture. India’s IT minister told global platforms they must operate within India’s constitutional framework and cultural context. Earlier this month, the government updated its rules to formally define AI-generated content and make platforms responsible for ensuring it is clearly labelled, while also cutting the deadline to remove unlawful content to three hours after notification, down from 36 hours. In finance, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked lenders to adopt board-approved policies for AI use, keep model information available for internal and external audits when required, ensure human oversight for models used in financial decision-making, and disclose where AI is used in products and services as adoption accelerates.
Signals To Watch:
From pledges to projects: which summit announcements translate into deployments you can point to, not just MOUs and skilling headlines.
Three-hour takedown becomes real: whether enforcement is strict and consistent, and how quickly platforms build 24/7 escalation, legal review, and audit trails to match.
Labeling starts to bite: whether “AI-generated” labeling becomes standardized in products and platforms, and how aggressively non-compliance is penalized.
Finance rules harden: whether RBI guidance turns into concrete supervisory expectations, including board-level governance, audit readiness, human oversight, and mandatory disclosure.
Capacity buildout changes the map: whether public-sector GPU additions and private builds (like Yotta) materially shift where large AI workloads run in India over the next 6–12 months.
Who wins the ecosystem layer: whether cloud, telco, or domestic infrastructure players become the default on-ramp for enterprises and government agencies adopting AI.
Lunar New Year Turns Into an AI Stress Test in China
In China, the Spring Festival Gala is not just entertainment. It is the country’s biggest attention node and a reliable signal of what the system wants to elevate. When humanoid robots move from a side segment to the main stage, it is a message about industrial direction, status, and momentum. The Gala is where national priorities get packaged into something mass audiences can absorb, and where companies get to borrow institutional credibility at population scale.
What mattered this week was what sat underneath that spectacle. The Spring Festival window has become a structured launch season for consumer AI. Major platforms timed upgrades, releases, and distribution pushes around the holiday peak, using it to drive trial and to test whether assistants can turn into daily routines. The push toward “agent” positioning, and the effort to embed AI inside core apps, were part of the same pattern: the fight is moving from who has the best model to who becomes the default layer people reach for first.
For operators, the Gala week compresses the future into a few days. It shows what “mass adoption conditions” actually look like: sudden traffic concentration, high expectations for uptime and safety, and a user base that will churn fast once incentives or novelty fades. If you sell AI products or rely on AI workflows, treat these attention spikes as real-world stress tests. Build for resilience, guardrails, and escalation, and watch the companies that convert a national showcase into repeat use after the holiday peak.
Signals To Watch
Post-holiday retention: who keeps users once the peak traffic and promotions fade.
Agent reality vs agent branding: which products move from “agent” marketing to reliable multi-step task completion inside real workflows.
Distribution shifts: whether AI features get pulled deeper into default surfaces (search, messaging, payment, short video, super-app entry points) rather than living as standalone apps.
Operational safety as a differentiator: how players handle misfires at scale, including content risk, model drift, and escalation speed under public scrutiny.
Robots beyond spectacle: whether humanoids show up in repeatable deployments in factories, logistics, retail, or public services instead of remaining choreographed demonstrations.
Takeaway
If you are buying or building, carry forward the practical questions: what parts of your rollout depend on temporary attention spikes versus durable integration, whether your operating model can meet faster enforcement rhythms, and whether your governance, labeling, oversight, and audit trails are strong enough for AI to live inside everyday workflows without eroding trust.
Sources
Reuters: From OpenAI to Google, India hosts global AI summit
Reuters: India File: AI fanfare meets policy pushback
Al Jazeera: India’s hosts AI Impact Summit, drawing world leaders, tech giants
The Economic Times: Google announces $30 million science fund; new subsea connectivity initiative
Microsoft Blog: We need to act with urgency to address the growing AI divide
SCMP: Kung fu, somersaults and scale: Unitree eyes 20,000-robot output in 2026 after gala
36Kr: Doubao Officially Announces Interactive Games for CCTV Spring Festival Gala, ByteDance’s AI Continues Aggressive Advance
Global Times: AI giants ramp up user competition with pre-Spring Festival digital red envelope campaigns