BRICS Nations Build Sovereign AI Ecosystem to Counter Western Dominance

China continues to lead BRICS in artificial intelligence, accounting for 47.2% of the world’s most-cited AI papers and topping global AI patent filings, according to Stanford’s 2024 AI Index. Backed by over $150 billion in state funding, China’s AI strategy has yielded competitive chips and language models from firms like Huawei and Baidu.

India is pushing ahead with its “IndiaAI” mission, a $1.2 billion program launched in 2023 to support open-source Indic language models, AI tools for agriculture, education, and healthcare, and local chip design.

Russia has tied AI to national security. Its “National AI Strategy 2030,” announced by President Vladimir Putin, earmarks $1.2 billion for defense-focused AI development.

Brazil and South Africa are emerging as hubs for ethical AI, especially in agriculture and public health. Brazil’s Embrapa is deploying AI in precision farming, while South Africa’s CSIR is applying AI in transport and eHealth. Egypt and Ethiopia are also investing in smart governance and AI research infrastructure.

A key goal of the BRICS AI strategy is to break from reliance on Western cloud providers and foundational models, which critics say reflect Western biases. China, India, and Russia are developing their own large language models, and in 2024, Brazil and China launched a joint project to build a Portuguese-Spanish LLM tailored for Latin America.

At the 2024 BRICS Summit in Kazan, members adopted a “Charter on Responsible AI,” promoting inclusive and culturally sensitive AI development—positioned as an alternative to the EU’s AI Act, which some view as restrictive for the Global South.

Financial support is coming from the New Development Bank, which launched a $5 billion Digital Sovereignty Fund in 2025 to boost AI infrastructure, including research parks, data centers, and chip manufacturing.

Efforts are also underway to develop a BRICS-based compute stack. China’s SMIC and India’s CDAC are advancing 7nm chip production, while countries like Iran and the UAE are investing in quantum computing and national AI entities.

Together, BRICS nations are reshaping the global AI landscape—shifting the power balance away from Western tech giants and toward a more pluralistic future.