BRICS is an intergovernmental grouping of major emerging economies. Its AI-related activity reaches the record here principally through Chinese initiatives addressed to the bloc rather than through instruments the members have jointly adopted, and the distinction matters for reading the commitments below: a proposal made by one member at a summit session is not a BRICS position.
AI cooperation structures
A BRICS AI Study Group appears in surveys of international AI initiatives as aligned with China's Global AI Governance Initiative, listed among non-binding intergovernmental efforts alongside the G7 Hiroshima AI Process, the G20 AI Principles and the OECD AI Principles (Regulating Under Uncertainty: Governance Options for Generative AI (G'sell, 2024)).
The China-BRICS AI Development & Cooperation Centre was established in January 2025 and is headquartered in Shanghai. Carnegie Endowment analysis describes it, with the China-Laos AI Innovation Cooperation Center, as part of the existing network of bilateral and regional AI cooperation centres that the proposed World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization would consolidate (Source: carnegieendowment.org).
BRICS was also named among the partners for the international AI application cooperation centres announced by Xi Jinping in his July 2026 World AI Conference keynote, alongside ASEAN, the League of Arab States, the African Union, CELAC and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Joining Hands to Build a Just and Equitable System For Global AI Governance (Xi Jinping, WAIC keynote, July 2026)).
The 18th summit (New Delhi, September 2026)
At Session II of the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 13, 2026, Xi delivered a national statement putting forward five cooperation initiatives, the first of them on AI. Under the "open source and inclusive AI initiative," China said it "will be a pioneer in establishing a BRICS AI open source community," support cooperation on developing and applying large language models, hold specialized AI seminars and training courses, and build an open ecosystem for AI. No funding figure, institution, timetable or compute commitment accompanied the statement, and it does not say the community exists (Xi Jinping, statement at Session II of the 18th BRICS Summit (New Delhi, September 2026)).
Separately, in the statement's section on global governance, Xi called on Global South countries to "develop AI for the positive and for good, and work faster to evolve a consensus-based global AI governance framework" — language repeating his July 2026 keynote, where it was tied to the United Nations' role. The four non-AI initiatives covered trade and investment facilitation, a BRICS digital ecosystem cloud platform, intelligent manufacturing standards, and a BRICS engineer cultivation alliance with a youth exchange programme (Xi Jinping, statement at Session II of the 18th BRICS Summit (New Delhi, September 2026); Source: cnbc.com).
The statement was a Chinese national statement at a summit hosted by India. Whether other members endorse the AI initiative is not recorded in the document, and Carnegie's mid-2026 assessment of Chinese AI diplomacy found that developing countries had not broadly endorsed the proposed institutional architecture, engaging selectively with Chinese, EU and US approaches (Source: carnegieendowment.org).
Open questions
- Whether a BRICS AI open source community is established, and with which members, is not stated in any document held here.
- The relationship between the BRICS AI Study Group, the China-BRICS AI Development & Cooperation Centre, and the proposed open-source community is not set out in the sources.
Relationships
- related: Xi Jinping, statement at Session II of the 18th BRICS Summit (New Delhi, September 2026) — the September 2026 statement proposing the open-source initiative
- related: Xi Jinping — author of the summit statement
- related: World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) — the China-led body proposed to consolidate these regional cooperation centres
- related: Chinese AI Policy — the national programme these initiatives extend internationally
- related: Open-Weight Frontier Models — the open-weight strategy the initiative extends to the bloc
- related: Regulating Under Uncertainty: Governance Options for Generative AI (G'sell, 2024) — surveys the BRICS AI Study Group among international initiatives
- related: Joining Hands to Build a Just and Equitable System For Global AI Governance (Xi Jinping, WAIC keynote, July 2026) — names BRICS among partners for China's AI cooperation centres