Which BRICS Nations Are Emerging on the Global AI Playing Field?

Growing trade ties between Russia and India are set to hit new heights, with artificial intelligence (AI) opening a new chapter in their bilateral ties. However, this potential collabоration is just one piece of a bigger puzzle. It’s important to consider how the broader BRICS+ bloc is stepping up efforts in AI development.

We analysed several AI landscapes and indexes, including those from Tortoise and Stanford. The following countries stand out in the alliance—those who might emerge as strong contenders on the world’s global AI leaderboard. 

India

According to the Global AI Index by Tortoise Media, India currently ranks 10th overall, second in AI talent, and third in AI operating environment.

A report by the IMARC Group specifies that India’s core AI technology market is projected to reach $4 billion by 2028. In contrast, Ken Research’s broader estimates already value the market at nearly $6 billion. 

Notably, India consistently ranks among the top five globally for AI-related scholarly papers, producing twice as many master’s-level engineering graduates as the global AI leader, the US. Bengaluru, India’s Silicon Valley, is home to numerous tech firms specialising in AI advancements. The number of tech startups has increased twentyfold in the past five years.

India’s strong presence in the AI-as-a-service sector and GenAI tools, especially natural language processing (NLP), instills confidence in its AI capabilities. India’s Union information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has recently committed to delivering a national foundation model within the next 10 months and domestically-produced GPUs within three to five years.

When it comes to leading AI players and key accomplishments, Sarvam AI is currently in discussions with the Indian government to develop a sovereign LLM tailored to accommodate India’s multilingual landscape. Meanwhile, Krutrim, India’s first AI unicorn, launched Krutrim-2 last month. It is a best-in-class LLM for Indic languages, and is simultaneously opening a dedicated AI research lab.

Reliance Industries recently launched a small language model in Hindi, and Meesho became the first Indian e-commerce company to deploy AI-generated voice for live customer support.

Russia

Russia ranks 21st in government strategies and 22nd in absolute AI capacity in the Global AI Index by Tortoise. Multiple sources state that Russia’s AI economic impact is projected to reach $45-$75 billion by 2028, roughly 4% of the nation’s GDP.

The nation’s AI-skilled workforce is growing rapidly, supported by prestigious technical universities. Russian IT and AI teams have secured 16 victories at the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) over the past 25 years—the most of any country since the start of the millennium. As a result, the nation ranks in the top 20 globally in AI research (2.4% global share). 

Data from the National Center for the Development of Artificial Intelligence indicates that 66% of Russian organisations in priority sectors (finance, healthcare, education, and ICT) actively adopted AI by mid-2024. In comparison, according to Yakov & Partners’ State of AI report,  20% of Russian companies have integrated GenAI into their business operations. 

In the country, a handful of industry leaders have developed their own GenAI models, though their numbers are few. Among Russian tech on the global AI market, only Yandex’s generative models stand alongside top GenAI solutions worldwide. This might come from being the only Russian IT company today mentioned in the same breath as Big Tech, making a big impact on global AI research and teaming up with machine learning groups around the world.

AI tech finds its biggest use in medicine, industry, energy, and finance. For example, 80% of AI solutions used in heavy industry were created domestically. Among the latest developments is a neural network algorithm that improves the quality of turning and lathe machining processes.

China

According to Tortoise Media, China is ranked second overall, trailing only the United States. The nation also holds the second position in terms of absolute AI capacity, as well as commercial implementation and AI infrastructure. China is a major contributor to global AI research and development, leading in the number of AI patents.

The number of Chinese AI professionals is growing rapidly, with China now producing the highest number of academic papers on machine learning and data science. 

China boasts a large number of prominent AI players recognised for their groundbreaking solutions and pioneering research, with intense competition often driven by aggressive price cuts. Arguably, the most famous of these players outside of China is DeepSeek.

Baidu has also emerged as an AI powerhouse. The company is known for its Ernie chatbot and Baidu AI Cloud for business applications, a standalone AI search app called Simple Search, and Apollo Go, an AI-powered robotaxi service.

Moreover, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is another dominant force in AI, known for its highly rated Doubao LLM and text-to-video models, Jimeng and X-Portrait. One of the world’s largest e-platforms, Alibaba, has also invested tens of billions of dollars into AI research through its DAMO Academy and released several notable solutions, including Qwen.

Another tech titan, Tencent, continues to expand its AI footprint with innovations like the Hunyuan foundation model and the Hunyuan text-to-video generator. 

MENA: BRICS+ 

Among the latest BRICS+ members, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates stand out, surpassing other new entrants in AI development and ambition. 

Saudi Arabia, ranked 14th overall and first in government strategy by Tortoise, has launched the $100 billion Project Transcendence, aiming to position itself as the world’s premier AI hub by 2030. Under Vision 2030, the Kingdom targets a $9.2 billion AI market. Institutions like KAUST—home to Shaheen III, the most powerful supercomputer in MENA—lead national AI research, supported by a growing AI-skilled workforce expanding at 51% annually. 

The UAE, ranked 20th overall and ninth in development by Tortoise, is the first country to appoint a minister of AI. The nation follows an ambitious path with its National Strategy for AI 2031 and a market CAGR of 36%, expected to reach $8.2 billion by 2030. Entities like Digital Dubai, G42, and the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence drive AI adoption across sectors from healthcare and energy to finance and smart cities.