Mozilla Highlights Open Source AI at India AI Impact Summit 2026

Leaders of global tech company Mozilla called today for significant investments in open source AI ahead of the India AI Impact Summit 2026. Mozilla’s President, Mark Surman; CTO, Raffi Krikorian, and Mozilla Foundation Executive Director Nabiha Syed will speak at the summit on the critical importance of digital sovereignty and digital public infrastructure, and the urgent need to build a global AI ecosystem firmly grounded in the public interest.

“Our message to leaders, policymakers, and AI Impact Summit attendees is clear: Open source AI is your path to both economic and digital sovereignty,” 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.”

Mozilla, whose holdings include Firefox and Thunderbird, recently announced over $1.4Bn in commitments to open source AI, responsible tech startups, and creating alternatives to AI giants. 

Raffi Krikorian, Chief Technology Officer at Mozilla, said,  “We seek to decentralise the AI ecosystem - put users in control of how systems interact with them, offer real choice, power innovation and platforms that adapt to local languages and cultures and support plurality and competition." 

At the Summit, Surman, Krikorian, and other leaders from 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 organisations working to build a more open and human-centred 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.

As part of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Mozilla is curating three official events that showcase its work to help build a more decentralised AI ecosystem. These include panels on the state of competition in AI, how open source AI can operationalise digital sovereignty, and the launch of a new convenings programme 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. 

Mozilla will also underline that open-source AI must remain a core part of global AI governance discussions and future international summits, on an equal footing with closed and proprietary models. Without this balance, the global community risks normalising a future in which the most powerful AI capabilities and the value they generate are controlled by a handful of companies.

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 decentralise 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.” 

EXPLORING INTERSECTIONS OF AI AND CULTURE IN BOLLYWOOD 

In partnership with G5A, Mozilla Foundation will launch ‘The Origin of Thought’ at the Summit - a new initiative to explore the intersections of culture and AI. The programme 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. 

Nabiha Syed, Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation, said: “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. 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.”