China Wants To Build A Third Global AI Bloc – What Does That Mean For Everyone?

The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi wrapped up this week with a broad tech agenda covering AI, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure and quantum tech.

The main headlines came from Xi Jinping’s sentiments. The Chinese president told the summit that China plans to lead the charge on a “BRICS AI open-source community” and build an Open Source Zone focused on joint LLM development, targeted AI training and a shared tech network.

How you read this depends on whether you treat it as a concrete plan or just leverage. The New Delhi Declaration doesn’t commit the full group to an open-source zone. It offers vague promises about widening AI access, paired with standard language around safety and security.

That gives everyone plenty of space to hammer out the specifics down the road, instead of delivering a binding agreement with shared infrastructure today. Right now, China is running this proposal up the flagpole, but the rest of the member states are yet to formally sign off.

The bloc is hardly an intimate gathering these days. BRICS now counts 11 members, spanning Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. That adds up to about 40% of global GDP and a large slice of humanity, heavily anchored in the Global South.

Whatever this initiative actually turns into, one can’t just write off an audience of that size.

What Does This Proposal Actually Deliver?

Looking past the summit buzzwords, the pitch breaks down into three parts.

First is shared technology, where collaborative work on large language models implies joint foundation models, tailored tools and pooled APIs. Second is a collective training drive, relying on workshops and seminars to level up researchers, engineers and officials across all 11 capitals. Third is shared foundations, where references to an open environment and a shared cloud setup hint at joint compute and data resources, even if nobody has drafted the blueprint yet.

The wider declaration mirrors this template, pairing generic AI access goals with calls for cybersecurity cooperation, quantum research and startup backing. The technical details are conveniently light, which is typical for a diplomat’s first draft.

For now, this looks like a strategic roadmap, with the hard engineering choices parked for another day.

Geopolitical Positioning Or Genuine Technical Cooperation?

Both views make sense at the same time, which is usually how these things play out.

The political motive is clear. China has made no secret of its desire to rework global tech rules and deepen ties across the Global South, positioning BRICS as an alternative to US and European influence over AI standards and tooling.

Positioning the push around openness lets China market itself as a champion for developing economies while discreetly pushing its own model architecture and technical rules beyond its borders.

At the same time, the practical benefits also hold weight. For plenty of BRICS nations, the main draw is pure convenience. Shared models, joint training and access to cheaper compute could truly bring down costs for local AI work, especially where Western tools are pricey or caught in export restrictions.

But turning that potential into actual progress rests on unresolved details, including whether countries like India will bite on China-centric setups, or if this ends up as a collection of smaller bilateral deals rather than a unified group effort.

A New Rulebook For The Global South

We’re looking at a clear third rulebook taking shape next to the light-touch US approach and the EU’s mountain of regulatory paperwork. The BRICS approach puts local sovereignty and cheap access ahead of massive compliance burdens. For Western AI providers expanding into these regions, the rules are splitting further apart.

Products targeting these markets will be expected to accommodate local data rules, model transparency and a strong preference for open software, on top of whatever compliance paperwork they already handle in the West.

Building across these regions increasingly means navigating BRICS as its own distinct environment for rules and technical standards, even without a single overarching law. Country-level regulations are already drawing direction from these joint declarations, which turns supporting multiple model architectures into a necessity over relying on one Western setup globally.

Should this open-source push capture good market share, the competition moves beyond traditional Western rivals to include freely available, locally tuned models backed by state infrastructure.

Teams getting involved in BRICS-linked incubators and pilot projects are actively influencing how concepts like openness and security are defined on the ground, instead of adapting to definitions created without their input.