OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Visits India, Discusses AI Collaboration and Market Potential

OpenAI Execs Meet Stakeholders To Discuss India's AI Ecosystem

This comes a day after OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman called India an "incredibly important" market for the AI giant Artificial intelligence (AI) giant OpenAI's top global executives reportedly continued to meet government officials, industry bodies and policy groups on the last leg of their India visit. As per Business Standard, OpenAI's top brass held two separate closed-door meetings with various groups on Thursday (February 6). Sources reportedly said that the meetings centred around understanding India's AI and data regulation policy landscape. "The idea of these meetings with us was to get an overview of the data and AI regulations in India. They (OpenAI executives) were trying to understand the data governance framework in India, the implications of possible AI regulations in the industry, the impact on labour and workforce due to AI, among other things," a source reportedly said. Multiple OpenAI executives, including global vice-president of Engineering Srinivas Narayanan, reportedly explained the company's products and offerings to the attendees of the meetings and underscored the importance of India in the "overall plans" of the company. The second meeting was reportedly attended by as many as 20-25 industry bodies and advocacy groups like Nasscom, The Quantum Hub, Broadband India Forum (BIF), The Centre for Internet & Society, among others. Representatives of law firms such as Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas also participated in the deliberations. As per the report, the second meeting saw OpenAI executives seek feedback from the participants on understanding India-specific use cases. The AI juggernaut's top brass also reportedly tried to understand existing copyright laws in India and the challenges they could potentially face while expanding presence in the country. "They (OpenAI) have been told by Meity (ministry of electronics and information technology) that the company needs to take a decision on the localisation of data of Indian citizens. While OpenAI has not made any commitments on the same, they have assured the government that they share the concerns and would soon share their India data storage plans," a source reportedly added. OpenAI's top brass also apprised the attendees on the nature of work being done by the company using its foundation models. This comes a day after OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman met IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in a closed-door meeting. The two also held a fireside chat later, where Altman called India an "incredibly important" market for the AI giant. The OpenAI chief executive also said that India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution, adding that the country is the company's second biggest market globally. He also met startup founders including the likes of ixigo's Aloke Bajpai, Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, Snapdeal and Titan Capital's cofounder Kunal Bahl, among others. During the meeting, Indian founders urged the company's top executives to introduce India-specific pricing and make the company's offerings and APIs more affordable for Indian developers and companies.

India Should Be One Of The Leaders Of AI Revolution: Sam Altman

ixigo cofounder Aloke Bajpai discussed challenges faced by Indian companies in leveraging the OpenAI stack and potential solutions to address them OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman said that India is an "incredibly important" market for the artificial intelligence (AI) giant. During a fireside chat with information technology (IT) minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday (February 5), Altman said that India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution. He said it is "really quite amazing" for him to witness the way the country has so far embraced the technology and built use cases on top of existing large language models (LLMs). The OpenAI CEO also noted that India is OpenAI's second biggest market globally, adding that the number of users in the country have tripled in the past year. Responding to a question about what aspects India should focus on on the AI front, Altman said, "I really want to echo the comments about the full-stack approach... But mostly seeing what people in India are building with AI at all levels of the stack - the stack, chips, models, all the incredible applications, India should be doing everything. India should be among the leaders of the AI revolution. It's really quite amazing to see what the country has done...". Altman is on a multi-country world tour and landed in India late on Tuesday night. Earlier in the day, he met IT Minister Vaishnaw and multiple Indian startup founders and VCs. He is also expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He met startup founders like Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Unacademy's Gaurav Munjal, Fractal's Srikanth Velamakanni, ixigo's Aloke Bajpai, and HeathifyMe's Tushar Vashisht in a closed-door meeting. The meeting was also attended by notable investors like Rajan Anandan and Harshjit Sethi of Peak XV Partners, Prayank Swaroop of Accel, and Lightspeed Venture Partners' Hemant Mohapatra. Founders Bat For India-Specific Pricing A source told Inc42 that the meeting between the founders and Altman largely centred around tech entrepreneurs pitching the company for India-centric pricing. Indian founders told Altman that big tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon already have India-specific pricing and that global pricing may not work in the Indian context. The founders also pitched the OpenAI CEO to ensure the company's offerings, including its APIs, are more affordable for Indian developers and companies. This, a founder on the condition of anonymity said, would enable small startups to adopt OpenAI's models in a big way. Altman said that the company is considering special pricing for the Indian market but steered clear of making any promises. The OpenAI CEO also said that he expects costs to decline "rapidly" over time as the company makes newer and more powerful models. In a post on X, cofounder and Snapdeal and Titan Capital Kunal Bahl said that there was acknowledgment that pricing for OpenAI products is "high" and the cost would have to come down "dramatically" for mass scale adoption. "... They recognise that the foundational models can only go as far ("80-90% of the way") and for specific industry/company contexts a robust application layer will be needed to take it to the 100% levels. This is important for the many startups in India building in the application layer," Bahl added. "As ChatGPT becomes an entry point for information research for users, the intention is to not charge for linking out of ChatGPT (unlike Google), as they believe it can impact the perception of trust in the results. Interesting implication for intent based ads businesses like Google and those who spend a lot on them," Bahl said. ixigo cofounder and group CEO Aloke Bajpai said he discussed challenges faced by Indian companies in leveraging the OpenAI stack and potential solutions to address them. "Our discussions revolved around various AI-driven use cases, including Indic languages and voice applications. It was also exciting to hear about their plans with deep research mode, Operator (newly released AI agent), glimpses of superintelligence in o3 (OpenAI's reasoning model) and how these offerings are pushing AI boundaries," Bajpai told Inc42. Meanwhile, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma told Moneycontrol that some attendees during the meeting pointed out that the cost of DeepSeek APIs is "dramatically" lower compared to OpenAI APIs. Without committing, Altman, as per Sharma, said that both options of open sourcing and reducing costs are on the table. Lightspeed India partner Mohapatra, in a post on X, noted that there is a need for more global AI leaders to visit India and understand the needs of the local market and build for it. He also underlined that the country is the largest open market for AI, outside the US. Altman, who is visiting India after two years, is currently on a multi-nation tour spanning Japan, South Korea, the UAE, and Germany. The trip comes at a time when OpenAI is facing major headwinds amid the rise of Chinese AI search engine platform DeepSeek, which claims to have built AI models that can rival top-tier models from US companies such as OpenAI, Meta, and Google at a fraction of the cost. India boasts one of the world's largest developer pools and population. Setting a concrete base in the country will enable OpenAI to ramp up its revenues. The trip also comes as the AI juggernaut is facing a flurry of copyright infringement cases for allegedly using the content of local digital platforms and book publishers to train its chatbot ChatGPT, without authorisation. Meanwhile, in a bid to stave off any further regulatory headwinds, OpenAI has also reportedly kicked off discussions for data localisations. As part of this, the company is looking to house the data of its Indian users within the country itself. "OpenAI is looking for ways to expand its India presence, which is a natural process since India is one of the biggest developer ecosystems for the company... It has already begun discussing ways to localise its Indian citizens' data in domestic data centres, in anticipation of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. The move to localise data operations is likely to commence soon," a person privy to the development told Livemint.

India Now OpenAI's Second Largest Market, CEO Sam Altman Says

The minister recently praised China's DeepSeek for shaking up AI sector OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Wednesday said India is now OpenAI's second-largest market by number of users, which have tripled in the past year. Altman met with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and discussed India's plan of creating a low-cost AI ecosystem. Altman lauded the country's rapid AI adoption and growing ambitions. Vaishnaw posted on X that he had a "super cool discussion" with Altman on India's "strategy of creating the entire AI stack - GPUs, model, and apps" and that OpenAI was willing to collaborate on all three. "I think India should be doing everything. I think India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution", Altman said, a reversal from last year when he cast doubt on whether the country could build a substantial model in the OpenAI space with a $10 million (roughly Rs. 87 crore) budget. It was Altman's first visit since 2023 to India, where his company faces legal challenges. Vaishnaw last week praised Chinese startup DeepSeek for shaking up the sector with its low-cost AI assistant, likening its frugal approach to his government's efforts to build a localised AI model. "Our country sent a mission to the moon at a fraction of the cost that many other countries did right, why can't we do a model that will be a fraction of the cost that many others do?" Vaishnaw said in a video of part of the discussion with Altman that he posted. Earlier, India's finance ministry issued an advisory urging employees to avoid using tools such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek for official work, citing risks posed to confidentiality of government documents and data, an internal department advisory showed. Before India, Altman visited Japan and South Korea, securing deals with SoftBank Group and Kakao. In Seoul, he also discussed the Stargate AI data center project with SoftBank and Samsung. OpenAI also faces a high-profile copyright infringement battle with India's top media houses. The company has said in court filings it does not have its servers in the country and Indian courts should not hear the matter. © Thomson Reuters 2025

India is a Very Important Market for AI, says OpenAI's Sam Altman in Delhi

During this trip, Altman is expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As part of his global tour, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in Delhi today for the company's DevDay, joined by India's IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and OpenAI's policy lead Pragya Misra. Altman underlined India's significance in the global AI ecosystem, also calling it their second biggest market. He clarified that his comment about India's foundational models two years ago is being taken out of context. "That was a very specific time with scaling laws. But we are now in a world where we have made incredible progress with distillation," he said, referring to the power of small models and reasoning models. He also said models are still not cheap, but they are doable, and India can be a leader. Back then, Altman had said it was totally "hopeless for India to compete with OpenAI in building foundation models". Altman still maintained that AI training costs will continue to rise exponentially, but the returns in intelligence and revenue will also grow significantly. These comments come in light of DeepSeek's rise. According to him, near-term AI models are already reaching the threshold of being good enough to address critical issues like healthcare and education -- sectors where India has much to gain from AI innovation. However, he emphasised that the technology is not yet advanced enough to cure cancer or similar diseases. Adding to this, Vaishnaw spoke about how India's young entrepreneurs are focused on pushing innovation to the next level while keeping costs down. He compared it to the Chandrayaan mission, asking why the same ambition and efficiency couldn't be brought to developing large language models (LLMs). Altman also spoke about OpenAI's recent release, deep research, a new capability in ChatGPT that independently conducts multi-step research on the internet. "Deep research can do a single digit percentage of all economic, time consuming tasks. It can make you twice as efficient," he said. During this trip, Altman is also set to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with other policymakers and developers. His visit comes at a time when India is ramping up its AI ambitions. Just yesterday, Ola chief Bhavish Aggarwal announced Krutrim AI Lab and the launch of several open source AI models tailored to India's unique linguistic and cultural landscape. The IndiaAI Mission seeks to build a comprehensive ecosystem that fosters AI innovation by democratising computing access, enhancing data quality, and developing indigenous AI capabilities.

OpenAI's Altman meets with India IT minister to discuss country's AI plans

(Reuters) - OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman met with India's IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday and discussed India's plan of creating a low-cost AI ecosystem. Vaishnaw said in a post on X that he had a "super cool discussion" with Altman on India's "strategy of creating the entire AI stack - GPUs, model, and apps" and that OpenAI was willing to collaborate on all three. Altman's India visit, his first since 2023, comes at a time when the company faces legal challenges in the country, its second-largest market by number of users. Vaishnaw last week praised Chinese startup DeepSeek for shaking up the sector with its low-cost AI assistant, likening its frugal approach to his government's efforts to build a localised AI model. "Our country sent a mission to the moon at a friction of the cost that many other countries did right, why can't we do a model that will be a fraction of the cost that many others do?" Vaishnaw said in a video of part of the discussion with Altman that he posted. Altman's trip to India follows visits to Japan and Korea. He clinched deals with SoftBank Group and Kakao. In Seoul, he also held talks with SoftBank and Samsung about the Stargate AI data centre project that has been backed by U.S. President Donald Trump. (Reporting by Nandan Mandayam in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

OpenAI's Altman Meets With India IT Minister to Discuss Country's AI Plans

(Reuters) - OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman met with India's IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday and discussed India's plan of creating a low-cost AI ecosystem. Vaishnaw said in a post on X that he had a "super cool discussion" with Altman on India's "strategy of creating the entire AI stack - GPUs, model, and apps" and that OpenAI was willing to collaborate on all three. Altman's India visit, his first since 2023, comes at a time when the company faces legal challenges in the country, its second-largest market by number of users. Vaishnaw last week praised Chinese startup DeepSeek for shaking up the sector with its low-cost AI assistant, likening its frugal approach to his government's efforts to build a localised AI model. "Our country sent a mission to the moon at a friction of the cost that many other countries did right, why can't we do a model that will be a fraction of the cost that many others do?" Vaishnaw said in a video of part of the discussion with Altman that he posted. Altman's trip to India follows visits to Japan and Korea. He clinched deals with SoftBank Group and Kakao. In Seoul, he also held talks with SoftBank and Samsung about the Stargate AI data centre project that has been backed by U.S. President Donald Trump. (Reporting by Nandan Mandayam in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman calls India key AI market, clarifies past remarks on development

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. Altman 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. Also read: Tim Cook says Apple doesn't plan to charge for AI features, here's why "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.

Sam Altman landing to find a spot for Open AI in India's big AI agenda

OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, will visit India on February 5th to meet government officials, tech entrepreneurs, and investors. This visit aims to position OpenAI within India's growing AI initiatives, including the IndiaAI Mission. It follows Altman's previous visit in June 2023 and coincides with India's push for indigenous AI development and infrastructure. OpenAI also faces competition from Chinese LLM developer DeepSeek and a copyright lawsuit in India. ChatGPT-maker OpenAI's cofounder and chief executive Sam Altman, who is set to visit India on February 5, will meet senior government officials, tech entrepreneurs and investors in New Delhi, people briefed on the matter said. The visit comes at a time when India is stepping up the ante on its artificial intelligence play with the launch of the IndiaAI Mission. "Altman's visit is to push OpenAI's case for becoming a part of India's national AI agenda...he is expected to meet top venture capital investors including those from firms such as Peak XV Partners and Accel in addition to senior government officials," a person in the know said on the condition of anonymity. The whirlwind trip to New Delhi is part of Altman's tour of Japan, South Korea, the UAE, Germany and France. OpenAI did not respond to queries till press time Monday. The Indian government recently announced the development of an indigenous foundational AI model, while also setting up a cluster of over 18,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) to be made available for entrepreneurs and academia. Altman had last visited India in June 2023 when he also went to several other countries including Japan, South Korea, Jordan, Israel and Singapore to pitch for AI regulations. Altman had then met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Globally, the Microsoft-backed firm is facing the heat from Chinese large language model (LLM) startup DeepSeek, which has developed an open-sourced model comparable to OpenAI's models at a fraction of the cost. This challenges OpenAI's dominance in the AI race, which it has led since 2022. Notably, India's Economic Survey for 2024-25, tabled in Parliament on January 31, noted that OpenAI initiated an "arms race" in AI -- leading to major tech firms rushing to capitalise on the growing demand for AI between 2022 and 2024. Altman's India visit comes just months after Japanese billionaire and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son on his India visit in November last year pitched for the country to become the chip capital of the world as AI resets the technology landscape. On Monday, the SoftBank Group and OpenAI agreed to set up a joint venture in Japan to offer AI services to corporate customers, Reuters reported. The joint venture, SB OpenAI Japan, will be owned by OpenAI and a company established by SoftBank and its domestic telecom arm. The Japanese investment giant will also pay $3 billion annually to use OpenAI's technology across SoftBank group companies. Separately, SoftBank is in talks to invest $25 billion in OpenAI, according to The Financial Times. Last year, the Indian government cleared the IndiaAI Mission with a corpus of Rs 10,371 crore over a five-year period to create computing infrastructure in public-private partnerships. In India, OpenAI is facing a copyright lawsuit from a group of book publishers and media companies. The case began with legal action last year by news agency Asian News International (ANI), and in recent weeks book publishers and almost a dozen digital media outlets, including New Delhi Television (NDTV). The publishers, represented by the Federation of Indian Publishers, claim that OpenAI's ChatGPT service infringes on their copyrights by reproducing book summaries and extracts from unlicensed online copies. The matter is being heard by the Delhi High Court. OpenAI has sought to dismiss the case, saying its ChatGPT service only disseminates public information.

India says OpenAI chief willing to collaborate on AI

India's technology minister said Wednesday that OpenAI chief Sam Altman was "willing to collaborate" with the world's most populous country in its bid to develop its own cut-price AI systems. Ashwini Vaishnaw said he held a "super cool discussion" with Altman in the capital New Delhi, where they talked about India's "strategy of creating the entire AI stack" of graphics processing units (GPU), models and apps. Vaishnaw said Altman was "willing to collaborate with India on all three", without giving further details. Altman said that India was OpenAI's second biggest market, with its users in the country of 1.4 billion people tripling in the past year. "India is an incredibly important market for AI in general and for OpenAI in particular," Altman told a closed-door meeting of Indian tech developers, in comments broadcast by the Press Trust of India news agency. "I think India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution," Altman said. "It's really quite amazing to see what the country has done, in embracing the technology and building the entire stack of things on top of it." OpenAI was the firm that brought generative models to public consciousness in 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT. Vaishnaw referenced India's space mission, which has included landing an unmanned craft on the moon in 2023, matching the achievements of established space powers at a much cheaper price tag. "Our country sent a mission to the moon at a fraction of the cost that other countries did," Vaishnaw said, in a speech alongside Altman. "Why can't we do a (AI) model that will be a fraction of the cost?" Altman told Vaishnaw that he was "really excited to do a lot more together". Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to co-host an artificial intelligence summit in France from February 10-11, which Altman is expected to attend. Altman is on a whirlwind tour of Asia, and signed a deal in South Korea on Tuesday with tech giant Kakao. The US firm is seeking new alliances after the release of Chinese rival DeepSeek last month shook the global AI industry.

India says OpenAI chief willing to collaborate on AI

NEW DELHI (AFP) - India's technology minister said yesterday that OpenAI chief Sam Altman was "willing to collaborate" with the world's most populous country in its bid to develop its own cut-price artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Ashwini Vaishnaw said he held a "super cool discussion" with Altman in the capital New Delhi, where they talked about India's "strategy of creating the entire AI stack" of graphics processing units (GPU), models and apps. Vaishnaw said Altman was "willing to collaborate with India on all three", without giving further details. Altman said that India was OpenAI's second biggest market, with its users in the country of 1.4 billion people tripling in the past year. "India is an incredibly important market for AI in general and for OpenAI in particular," Altman told a closed-door meeting of Indian tech developers, in comments broadcast by the Press Trust of India news agency. "I think India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution," Altman said. "It's really quite amazing to see what the country has done, in embracing the technology and building the entire stack of things on top of it." OpenAI was the firm that brought generative models to public consciousness in 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT. Vaishnaw referenced India's space mission, which has included landing an unmanned craft on the Moon in 2023, matching the achievements of established space powers at a much cheaper price tag. "Our country sent a mission to the Moon at a fraction of the cost that other countries did," Vaishnaw said, in a speech alongside Altman. "Why can't we do a (AI) model that will be a fraction of the cost?" Altman told Vaishnaw that he was "really excited to do a lot more together". Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to co-host an artificial intelligence summit in France from February 10-11, which Altman is expected to attend. Altman is on a whirlwind tour of Asia, and signed a deal in South Korea on Tuesday with tech giant Kakao. The United States firm is seeking new alliances after the release of Chinese rival DeepSeek last month shook the global AI industry.

India second largest market for OpenAI; users have tripled: Sam Altman

India is the second-largest market for OpenAI, Sam Altman said in New Delhi on Wednesday, adding that the company tripled its number of users here in the past year. "India is an incredibly important market for AI, in general, for OpenAI in particular," Altman said. "India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution. It's really quite amazing to see what the country has done and embraced the technology and building the entire stack of things on top of it." Present at the OpenAI event, the country's Information & Technology minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said that AI innovation can come from anywhere in the world. This comes on the back of the Indian government looking at companies training indigenous large language models as it opens up a cluster of 18,000 GPUs (graphics processing units). Altman, while talking about his comments at The Economic Times Conversations in 2023 about Indian startups not being able to build foundational models due to high compute costs and that it's "hopeless" to compete with OpenAI, said his comments were taken out of context. "I still think to stay on that frontier of pre-trained models is expensive, but one of the most exciting things that's happened in the industry since then is we're now in a world where we've made incredible progress with distillation, we learned a lot to do small models, and these reasoning models in particular can be - it's not cheap, it's still expensive to train them, but it's doable," Altman explained. "I think that's going to lead to an explosion of really great creativity, and India should be a leader there," he said. Altman believes that costs will continue to rise on this exponential curve, but the returns will be exponential in terms of the economic and scientific value that can be created. "The cost for a given unit of intelligence one year later seems to fall by about 10x," he said. "I don't think it means that the world's going to need any less AI hardware, because you bring the cost down and just use it for a lot more things. The total number of dollars will go up." When asked about India's leadership on the global stage, Altman said, "It seems to me like it's working." "Why shouldn't it come from India? Our young entrepreneurs, our startups, our researchers, they are really, really focused on getting to that next level of innovation, which will reduce the cost," Vaishnaw said. India's focus areas with AI are in population-scale applications in healthcare, education, agriculture, weather forecasting, disaster management, transportation, and others. Altman said that the models it is releasing are finally at the stage where it will be able to address such problems. "The models that we'll release in the coming months are over the threshold of being good enough to really address these problems, and now people just have to go build the solutions," he said. "So someone in this room hopefully will figure out what the AI tutor of the future looks like, and, that'll be a population-scale." On OpenAI's latest feature, Deep Research's ability to solve complex problems like cancer, Altman said, however that it is still a research assistant and not an innovator. "I don't think we're yet at the technological level where any of us should expect these models to go cure cancer on their own," he said. "We will get there, I think. But for now, I think this can help people and help researchers be much more productive in what they do." He added that Deep Research can do a single-digit percentage of all of the economically valuable tasks in the world and almost none of the complete jobs, though its utility lies in making researchers more efficient.

Indian Startup Founders Push OpenAI to Offer Region-Specific AI Pricing

India is a key player in AI, with a thriving developer and startup ecosystem. As the Indian founders met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and their leadership team in Delhi, the sentiment was clear - tech leaders pushed for region-specific pricing for OpenAI's models in India. We at AIM had pointed out earlier the implications of high-cost and premium pricing models for advanced tools in a country like India. India's significance in the global AI ecosystem is visible, and Altman reinforced that by calling it its second-biggest market. India prides itself on having one of the best developer and startup ecosystems. Indian leaders, including policymakers, venture capitalists, developers, and founders, met for a closed-door roundtable meeting to discuss how OpenAI's models can support businesses in India. Kunal Bahl, co-founder at Snapdeal, who was part of the event, took to X to share that OpenAI's leadership team acknowledged its high pricing and the need for significant cuts for mass adoption, with possible updates ahead. In his post, Bahl says OpenAI acknowledged that foundational models reach 80-90% efficiency and require a robust application layer for full industry-specific use -- crucial for startups in this space. Many startups are building on OpenAI's models on the application layer. HealthifyMe's Tushar Vashisht, who was also present at the event, said, "AI+human coaches, tutors, doctors -- coming soon from India for India and the world." In an AIM podcast earlier, OpenAI's policy lead Pragya Misra cited Healthify and Be My Eyes as examples of the company's impact on the Indian market and beyond. She highlighted how Indian startups are already developing products for a global audience. The roundtable saw key players from India's startup scene, including Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Unacademy's Gaurav Munjal, Fractal's Srikanth Velamakanni, Ixigo's Aloke Bajpai, and Aakrit Vaish, who advises the India AI Mission. IT minister Ashwini Vaishnav is optimistic about India's youth on pushing innovation to the next level while keeping costs down. Speaking at the event, he compared it to the Chandrayaan mission, asking why the same ambition and efficiency couldn't be brought to developing large language models (LLMs). Addressing costs, Altman pointed out that AI training costs will continue to rise exponentially, so do the returns in intelligence. That said, Altman noted that the company will continue to make solutions unique for India's needs. The meeting took place amid growing competition from Chinese AI lab DeepSeek, which claims to offer AI models comparable to OpenAI, Meta, and Google, at significantly lower costs and is open-source. The meeting focused on discussing Indian user preferences and API pricing. Touching upon the lower cost of DeepSeek APIs, speaking to Moneycontrol, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said, "Although Sam did not commit to anything, he said that options of open sourcing and reducing costs are both on the table." It is interesting to note that Altman recently conceded that the future of AI will ultimately be open-source in an AMA session on Reddit. "I personally think we have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open-source strategy," he said. "Not everyone at OpenAI shares this view," Altman said. At the event, Altman discussed deep research, a new capability in ChatGPT that independently conducts multi-step research on the Internet. "Deep research can perform a single-digit percentage of all economic, time-consuming tasks. It can make you twice as efficient," he said. Funnily, in just 24 hours since the launch of OpenAI's Deep Research, an open-source version of the tool was built on HuggingFace, scoring 55% on GAIA, one of the leading benchmarks for AI assistants. Just as startup founders questioned API pricing, India's price-sensitive market suggests that a uniform pricing strategy for AI models may not be as effective from a consumer standpoint. While AI accessibility is improving, true adoption in India hinges on both usability and affordability. Simplified interfaces help, but without cost-effective pricing, AI may remain out of reach for many. OpenAI now offers ChatGPT Pro at $200/month and is rumoured to introduce plans up to $2,000/month due to high compute costs of advanced models. While economics often sees costs decrease over time. Many people responded to Altman on X, highlighting that in the current realm, $200 per month is comparable to salaries and average incomes in many economies outside the US - suggesting that AI subscription pricing cannot be the same globally. In India, for instance, the average monthly income is around ₹20,000. "The potential of advanced AI models with AGI capabilities in India lies in their ability to deeply integrate with the country's diverse and localised contexts," said Digital Empowerment Foundation's Osama Manzar. He was speaking in the context of making AI more accessible and bridging the urban-rural divide. "For these technologies to meaningfully impact the daily lives of average Indians and create new opportunities, the approach must prioritise hyper-localised content generation," he added.

India AI stack: Why Sam Altman's visit to India matters

OpenAI's Sam Altman is visiting India among other countries to push AI collaboration, focusing on boosting the AI ecosystem, including cost-effective models. Altman has acknowledged past remarks about high computing costs but sees potential in India as a leader in AI development. Just when an artificial intelligence (AI) war is raging, Microsoft-backed OpenAI's chief Sam Altman is visiting India. Days after China's low-cost DeepSeek artificial intelligence tool rattled the tech world a week ago by surpassing ChatGPT in popularity on Apple's App Store in the US, OpenAI launched o3-mini, the most cost-efficient of its reasoning agents, which "advances the boundaries of what small models can achieve" as well as a 'Deep Research' tool with which ChatGPT can now carry out complex and multi-step research by parsing large amounts of online data. This is Altman's first visit after 2023 when he met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Altman's visit to India, along with South Korea, Japan, the UAE, Germany and France, amid the turmoil in the AI world indicates OpenAI's plan to partner with a large market where AI has yet to take root. Altman's visit comes at a time when India is upping the ante on its AI play with the launch of the IndiaAI Mission. "Altman's visit is to push OpenAI's case for becoming a part of India's national AI agenda. India was shown to be a laggard in the AI race after China's DeepSeek shook the world with its low-cost model while OpenAI had to contend with a much smaller rival. In India, OpenAI is facing a copyright lawsuit from a group of book publishers and media companies. India is the second-largest market for OpenAI, Altman said in New Delhi on Wednesday, adding that the company tripled its number of users here in the past year. Union minister for electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw today met Altman to discuss India's strategy for developing a comprehensive AI ecosystem. Following the meeting, Vaishnaw posted on X: "Had super cool discussion with Sam Altman on our strategy of creating the entire AI stack - GPUs, model, and apps. Willing to collaborate with India on all three." During the discussion, Vaishnaw emphasised India's ability to develop cost-effective AI models, drawing comparisons to the country's low-cost space missions. "Our country sent mission to the mood at a fraction of the cost, that many other countries dis right? why cant we do a model which will be a fraction of the cost, that many other countries do. So yes Innovation will bring in that cost down within application in healthcare and education.in agriculture, in weather forecasting, in disaster management, transport multiple different things we are working on," he said. During his meeting with Vaishnaw, Altman also clarified that his remarks at The Economic Times Conversations in 2023, where he stated that Indian startups may struggle to develop foundational models due to high computing costs and that competing with OpenAI was "hopeless," were taken out of context. Altman explained: "That was a very specific time when there was a certain scaling thing where I thought and I still think, just staying on that frontier of creature models is expensive. But one of the most exciting things that's happened to me since the bad things happen in the industry. Since we're now in a world where we made incredible drugs with distillation, we learned a lot about doing small models, and this reasoning in models, in particular, can be that it's not cheap. It's still expensive to train them, but it's doable, and I think that's going to lead to an explosion of really great creativity. And you know, India should be the leader there. "There are two different ways you can look at the costs of models, to stay at the frontier. We believe those costs will continue to rise on this exponential curve, but also the returns to increase the intelligence are exponential in terms of the economic value of the scientific value that you would create. "So, we're doing this big Stargate project, and that's going to go like this. On the other side of it, the cost for a given unit of intelligence one year later seems to fall by about 10x. Was a 2X every 18 months for the number of transitions on a chip and that changed the world if you waited a few decades. "But, what's happening with the reduction in cost in AI models, is extraordinary. Now, I don't know what it means that the world's gonna need any less AI hardware because you bring the cost down and just the people are going to use it for a lot more things. The total number of dollars will go up, but that's a really exciting thing happening." Despite India traditionally being home to a large tech talent, China's AI advances with the release of DeepSeek have raised a question over India's technological capabilities when innovation is happening at a lightening speed. Building its own cutting-edge AI technology is critical for India not just for social, economic and governance aspects but it is also needed for strategic reasons. India has been divided into two factions over the past year. One group advocates building indigenous foundational models from scratch, while the other supports the development of smaller language models with fewer parameters, focusing on specific applications. India is now setting aside scepticism about its capacity to develop its own foundational models. India will offer the cheapest compute in the world at less than $1 per hour for high-end chips that power generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) as part of the government's Rs 10,000 crore IndiaAI Mission which came into play last week. The government will also incentivise the development of local language models built by academia and industry with investment capital and other support, Union minister Vaishnaw has said. The move is aimed at building up Indian language foundational model muscle. Proposals for model development will be invited soon. At least six startups and developers that can do it within the next 10 months have been identified, he said. ET was the first to report on January 23 that India will back indigenous foundational models. "The real value will come from two things--algorithmic efficiency and the quality of training datasets," Vaishnaw said, adding that Chinese AI company DeepSeek has proven to the world that a cost-efficient model can be developed. "DeepSeek was trained on 2000 GPUs (graphics processing units)," Vaishnaw said. "We have now 15,000 high-end GPUs. (OpenAI's) ChatGPT version 1 was trained on about 25,000 GPUs. So this gives us a huge compute facility, something which will really give a boost to our ecosystem." GPUs are high-capacity chips needed to run complex AI development tasks. Vaishnaw said India is not late to the AI party and will play a big role in the innovation taking place in the field globally. Since India has now incentivised compute, the models will follow, he said. When India has shun the hesitancy to develop its own full AI stack, which would include not just GPUs and apps but also foundational models, a collaboration with Altman's OpenAI, the pioneer in the field, can help the country achieve its goal faster. (With inputs from TOI)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to meet PM Modi this week: Here is everything we know so far

Data privacy remains a key concern, especially when using foreign AI models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is set to visit India this week and is expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw. His visit comes as India looks to strike a balance between developing its own AI models and leveraging existing AI technologies. S Krishnan, Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), recently spoke about India's AI ambitions at a town hall event hosted by CNBC-TV18. He highlighted that the government is keen on using open-source models to build the country's first foundational AI model. However, it is also open to exploring partnerships with existing AI companies, including OpenAI. Also read: OpenAI faces legal heat in India, here's why Krishnan mentioned that the government is open to exploring potential cooperation with OpenAI, but clarified that ChatGPT is not an open-source model. "Our models will have to be built on open-source foundations," he said. This indicates that India wants to ensure transparency and control over its AI development while still learning from global advancements. Krishnan also highlighted Deepseek as an example of a hybrid approach to AI development. "DeepSeek has shown that you can take certain parts of another model and then build on that," he explained. However, he pointed out a major challenge -- uncertainty regarding the training data used in these models. Also read: Accident or cover-up? OpenAI allegedly deletes potential evidence in copyright case Data privacy remains a key concern, especially when using foreign AI models. "If you use DeepSeek as an app, it's likely that the data travels to their servers," Krishnan said. To address this, he suggested a solution: "We can pick up DeepSeek, host it on Indian servers, so that data stays here in India." This would allow India to benefit from AI advancements while keeping user data secure.

India Key Market for AI and OpenAI: OpenAI CEOOpenAI CEO Meets India's IT Minister to Discuss AI Collaboration and Plans

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met India's IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday to discuss India's plan for creating a low-cost AI ecosystem. Altman stated that India is crucial for artificial intelligence and OpenAI, adding that India -- with its full-stack model -- should be among the leaders of the AI revolution. Also Read: India to Develop Indigenous Generative AI Model: Report Vaishnaw noted that Altman was open to collaborating with India in its efforts to build cost-effective AI solutions. The minister highlighted India's goal of creating an entire AI ecosystem, including GPUs, models, and applications. Altman's visit comes days after the finance ministry reportedly directed its officers not to download or use AI tools and apps such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek on office computers and devices, citing confidentiality risks to data and documents. Following the meeting, Vaishnaw, in a series of posts on X, said: "PM Narendra Modi Ji guides us to democratise technology. Sam Altman appreciated PM's vision." "Had super cool discussion with Sam Altman on our strategy of creating the entire AI stack - GPUs, model, and apps. Willing to collaborate with India on all three," Vaishnaw added. According to a PTI report, Vaishnaw emphasised that India's entrepreneurial talent is really focused on getting the next level of innovation 'that will reduce the cost', and hoped to raise the bar on cost-efficient large language models (LLMs). During the discussion, Vaishnaw highlighted India's ability to develop cost-effective AI models, drawing comparisons to the country's low-cost space missions. "Our country sent a mission to the moon at a fraction of the cost that many other countries did right, why can't we do a model that will be a fraction of the cost that many others do? So, yes, innovation will bring that cost down within application in healthcare and education, in agriculture, in weather forecasting, in disaster management, transport, multiple different things we are working on." Vaishnaw said in a video of part of the discussion with Altman, which he posted on X. He also encouraged the startup community to contribute innovative AI solutions and announced plans for an open competition. "I request the entire startup community to come up with unique solutions and will be open. We're soon starting a kind of open competition for it, open empanelment, competition type of thing so that would be huge, so many problems can be solved, why dont use this latest technology that we have or solving these problems right? You guys are good about that," Vaishnaw added. Vaishnaw's comments come a few weeks after he announced that, as part of the Rs 10,738 crore India AI Mission, India would develop multiple foundational models, set to be launched in the coming months. Also Read: OpenAI's ChatGPT Service Only Disseminates Public Information: Report According to the report, Altman, in a closed-door meeting with Indian tech developers, reaffirmed India's growing significance for OpenAI. Startup founders expressed that OpenAI would need to cut down on its pricing to make it big in India. "India is an incredibly important market for AI in general, for OpenAI 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 reportedly said. "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, according to reports. "We have learnt a lot about these small models and reasoning models. It is still not cheap... it is still expensive to train them, but it is doable. I think that is going to lead to an explosion of really great creativity. India should be a leader there, of course," Altman said, according to the report. He noted that the cost of developing model models in AI is still not cheap but there has been a lot of progress in AI that will require less hardware and the rest of it can be used for other purposes. "The cost for a given unit of intelligence, one year later, seems to fall by about 10x," Altman reportedly said. "Artificial intelligence may not be ready to cure cancer on its own, but it can significantly enhance the efficiency of researchers working on complex problems," Altman said, according to a Moneycontrol report. During a fireside chat with India's IT Minister, Altman explained, "This (Deep Research) can help someone review the existing literature and find some connections. But this is not an innovator yet." "I don't think we're yet at the technological level where any of us should expect these models to go cure cancer on their own. We will get there, I think. Yes. But for now, I think this can help researchers be much more productive in what they do," Altman reportedly said. "You can double the efficiency of every scientist on Earth with the tool we have today, which I believe might be possible," he added. "If you are a scientist trying to cure some disease, deep research is surely not going to go cure that disease on its own. But if you can farm out the tasks that took you a lot of time but were lower value, you learn to work that way, maybe you can be twice as efficient," Altman reportedly said. Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl shared key takeaways from the closed-door discussion on X. "Acknowledgment that pricing is high currently and that for mass scale adoption, it would need to come down dramatically. Possibly more updates on that in the future," Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl said in a tweet on social media platform X (formerly Twitter). "As ChatGPT becomes an entry point for information research for users, the intention is to not charge for linking out of ChatGPT (unlike Google), as they believe it can impact the perception of trust in the results. Interesting implication for intent-based ads businesses like Google and those who spend a lot on them," Bahl added. Also Read: India to Promote Cheap Data Rates, 5G Expansion to Attract Global Investments: Report Altman's visit to India comes as OpenAI faces legal challenges over its alleged use of copyrighted content from media organisations. His visit follows trips to Japan and Korea, where he announced deals with SoftBank Group and Kakao. In Seoul, Altman held discussions with SoftBank and Samsung regarding the Stargate AI data center project, backed by US President Donald Trump. On Monday, Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group and OpenAI announced a 50:50 partnership to establish SB OpenAI Japan. Last week, India outlined its global AI ambitions, unveiling plans to develop its own 'foundational model' to compete with ChatGPT, DeepSeek R1, and others. The initiative includes building an affordable common computing facility powered by 18,693 GPUs to support startups and researchers in developing AI applications and new algorithms. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that India is all set to launch its own secure, indigenous AI model at an affordable cost. Compared to global models that cost USD 2.5-USD 3 per hour of usage, India's AI model will cost less than Rs 100 per hour (USD 1.16 per hour) after a 40 percent government subsidy. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to co-host an artificial intelligence summit in France from February 10-11, where Altman is expected to attend. Also Read: India's Digital Economy to Outpace Agriculture, Manufacturing by 2030: Govt Report In a recent post on X (formerly Twitter), Altman had called Deepseek's R1 an 'impressive model' given its funding. On January 28, 2025, Altman posted on X, "DeepSeek's R1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price. We will obviously deliver much better models and also it's legit invigorating to have a new competitor! we will pull up some releases. but mostly we are excited to continue to execute on our research roadmap and believe more compute is more important now than ever before to succeed at our mission. The world is going to want to use a LOT of ai, and really be quite amazed by the next-gen models coming. Look forward to bringing you all AGI and beyond." Earlier in January, Altman had asked Twitter to chill and said that OpenAI hasn't built AGI yet. "Twitter hype is out of control again. We are not gonna deploy AGI next month, nor have we built it. We have some very cool stuff for you but pls chill and cut your expectations 100x!" Altman postd on January 20.

OpenAI's CEO Touts Tripling of Users in Pitch to India Founders

OpenAI's Sam Altman called India the startup's most important international market after a tripling in users last year, closing a days-long tour of Asia that's taken him from Tokyo to Delhi. Altman is jetting around the globe at a time OpenAI's dominance of AI is under pressure from competitors like Chinese upstart DeepSeek. India is one of the largest global talent pools of AI developers and key to the ambitions of tech leaders Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, as well as startups like Anthropic.

Legal challenges await OpenAI chief as he visits India on global tour

A copyright lawsuit filed against OpenAI by one of the country's largest news agencies could have implications for the future of artificial intelligence in India. NEW DELHI -- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visits India this week as his company fights off a major copyright lawsuit in its second-largest market -- yet another legal headache for the creator of ChatGPT as it seeks to cement itself as the global leader in artificial intelligence. The lawsuit is led by one of the country's largest news wires and has united players across a diverse, often fragmented Indian media landscape. Mirroring similar legal challenges facing the company worldwide, the suit alleges that OpenAI has illegally used copyrighted content to train the algorithms that power its popular chatbots. "If the Indian court becomes one of the first courts to decide on this issue, it could be a trendsetter," said Aditya Gupta, an expert in Indian copyright law. "The size of the Indian market is impossible for OpenAI to ignore. They can't just say, 'I'll exit India; it doesn't matter.'" OpenAI has argued in court that India lacks jurisdiction over the issue. "We are actively engaged in constructive partnerships and conversations with many news organizations around the world, including India, to explore opportunities, listen to feedback, and work collaboratively," OpenAI spokesman Jake Wilczynski said in a statement to The Washington Post. "We build our AI models using publicly available data, in a manner protected by fair use and related principles, and supported by long-standing and widely accepted legal precedents." Since the release of ChatGPT, OpenAI has become entangled in legal battles with artists, actors and authors, as well as media companies. The New York Times filed a closely watched copyright infringement suit in a federal court in Manhattan in late 2023; eight other daily U.S. newspapers sued the company in April. Increasingly, the fight over copyright and artificial intelligence has become global in scope. Asian News International (ANI) launched its legal challenge in November, the same month that a group of Canadian news organizations filed suit again OpenAI in Ontario Superior Court. Courts and governments around the world are scrambling to set boundaries around the development of generative AI, which is developed by running complex algorithms on huge datasets often taken from the public internet. OpenAI could face a particularly acute challenge in India, analysts say, because copyright laws here provide content creators with stronger protections than in the United States. The Indian lawsuit, filed by ANI, argues that OpenAI operates as an unfair competitor and that its language models attribute false responses to ANI. OpenAI is "diverting traffic" from the agency to ChatGPT by offering itself as a free "convenient alternative" to paying for the original content, the complaint alleges. ANI declined to comment for this story. Other news associations such as the Digital News Publishers Association, whose members include the Indian Express and the Hindustan Times, have attempted to join the lawsuit. Included in ANI's legal complaint is a series of WhatsApp messages sent last year by the news agency's director, Ishaan Prakash, to a top OpenAI executive, providing a window into high-level communications before the lawsuit. "My apologies if this comes across as threatening but it stems from worry and frustration," Prakash wrote in a July message to Pragya Misra, OpenAI's public policy chief in India. "Worry - ANI IPR is being used without our authorisation. Frustration - After unauthorised used, we have documented misinformation stemming from an incorrect interpretation of ANI work." As its legal challenges have mounted, OpenAI has struck licensing deals with major publishers, including the Associated Press, the Financial Times, Time magazine, Condé Nast and Politico owner Axel Springer. ANI -- whose subscribers include major outlets such as the BBC -- claims its repeated requests to enter into a similar arrangement have been rejected. "OpenAI has entered into agreements with various big media houses in the West to train its models on, why not with India's largest news agency if you are present in this country too?" Prakash wrote to Misra, according to the complaint. Altman's trip to India, where he is due to meet with members of civil society and government officials, is the latest stop on an international tour. Earlier this week, he was in Japan, where SoftBank pledged billions of dollars to OpenAI. After India, Altman will head to Paris to attend a summit co-chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The global charm offensive by OpenAI coincides with the recent appearance of an unexpected rival, the Chinese company DeepSeek, which stunned Silicon Valley and Wall Street last month with the release of a new chatbot it claimed was cheaper to develop. In December, Altman donated $1 million to Donald Trump's inaugural fund and has sought to pitch his company to decision-makers in Washington as a bulwark against China's AI ambitions. Analysts say the growing competition from DeepSeek may push OpenAI to double down on global relationships and seek commercial advantages abroad. Gupta, the copyright lawyer, said Altman's stop in India could be part of an effort to convince the country to move in the direction of Japan and Singapore, where there have been new legal carve-outs for the company's algorithmic training. In considering the ANI case, India's judiciary must wrestle with fundamental questions about the future of AI, legal experts say, in ways that go beyond the American legal challenges. While the New York Times, for example, alleges OpenAI violated its paywall, ANI argues that even its publicly available material should be protected from scraping. "The case will not only decide whether generative AI tools are made available to Indian users ... but is also likely to determine whether India becomes a favorable destination for the training of LLMs," Gupta said, using the shorthand for large language models. The lawsuit also has the potential to open up a "geopolitical can of worms," said Meghna Bal, a technology lawyer and director of the Esya Center, a think tank based in New Delhi. "Trump has signaled pretty clearly that you better learn to play ball with our companies and not target them with regulation -- or else." Pranshu Verma in Washington and Gerrit De Vynck in San Francisco contributed to this report.