Altman reveals that OpenAI's user base has tripled in India, making it the company's second-largest market.
He defends his past remarks on India’s AI development, emphasizing the role of small and reasoning AI models in fostering creativity.
India's IT Minister Vaishnaw announces plans to introduce a homegrown AI model with a government-subsidized computational facility.
During a fireside talk with India’s IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman praised the country’s rising role in the artificial intelligence revolution. He claimed that India is a key market for AI development. During the chat, he also revealed that OpenAI’s user base has tripled in the last year, making India the company’s second largest market.
SurveyAltman also stated that India’s efforts to develop AI at the entry level, from chips to models, as well as the country’s excellent AI applications, position it as a vital player in the global AI landscape.
“India is an incredibly important market for AI in general, for open AI in particular, it’s our second biggest market. Tripled users here in the last year, but mostly seeing what people in India are building with AI at all levels of the stack, chips, models, you know, all of the incredible applications,” Altman said as quoted by PTI.
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“I think India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution. But it’s really quite amazing to see what the country has done… embraced the technology and is building the entire stack of things on top of it,” Altman added.
For those unfamiliar, this is Altman’s second India tour in two years, and it comes at a critical time for OpenAI, which is facing competition from Chinese AI company DeepSeek. There could be another motive for the visit, since the ChatGPT maker has been dealing with legal issues in the country, including copyright allegations.
Altman also stated that his statement that India should not even try to build its AI model was taken out of context. Defending his statement, he stated, “In reference to the comment I made in India a few years ago about the cost of building foundational AI models, it was taken out of context. That was a certain time of scaling AI, and I still think that pre-trained foundational AI models are expensive. But, one of the most exciting things that have happened in the industry is that there’s a lot that we’ve done now in distillation of AI models,” he added. ‘
He also added, “There’s a lot that we’ve done with small models, and reasoning models today are not cheap, but still doable. This can lead to an explosion of creativity, and India should be a leader there.”
Meanwhile, India’s IT Minister Vaishnaw affirmed that the country will introduce its own AI model within the next 10 months. It will be driven by a computational facility made up of 18,693 GPUs. The Indian government aims to make AI more affordable and accessible, with usage prices expected to be under Rs 100 per hour after a 40% government subsidy.
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Ashish Singh
Ashish Singh is the Chief Copy Editor at Digit. He's been wrangling tech jargon since 2020 (Times Internet, Jagran English '22). When not policing commas, he's likely fueling his gadget habit with coffee, strategising his next virtual race, or plotting a road trip to test the latest in-car tech. He speaks fluent Geek. View Full Profile
