OpenAI Launches Data Residency Program in Asia, Including India

OpenAI launches a data residency program in Asia | TechCrunch

OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February. The new program, which is available for OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help Asia-based organizations meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the AI company's products. Eligible API customers and new ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu subscribers can choose to have their data stored at rest in supported countries: Japan, India, Singapore, and South Korea. "For the API platform and ChatGPT business products, data remains confidential, secure, and entirely owned by you," wrote OpenAI in a blog post. "Data residency further enhances data control for organizations." The debut of the Asia data residency program comes as OpenAI looks to accelerate its expansion abroad. This week, the company announced OpenAI for Countries, an initiative OpenAI says will enable it to build out the infrastructure needed to better serve international clientele.

Now, OpenAI Will Store ChatGPT Enterprise and API User Data in India

The company now allows organisations operating in Japan, India, Singapore and South Korea to store data locally while using OpenAI's products. OpenAI on Wednesday introduced data residency in Asia, allowing organisations operating in Japan, India, Singapore and South Korea to store data locally while using its products. "With data residency, eligible API customers and new ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu customers can choose to have customer content stored at rest in supported countries," said the company. The data that can be stored includes users' conversations with ChatGPT, which encompass prompts, uploaded files, and context across various mediums, such as text, images, and the vision modality. "Data residency builds on OpenAI's robust data privacy, security, and compliance features, which support hundreds of organisations partnering with OpenAI across Asia today -- from start-ups and large enterprises to academic institutions -- including Kakao, SoftBank, Grab, Singapore Airlines, and many more," added the company. OpenAI also mentioned that it is using AES-256 encryption for data at rest and TLS 1.2+ for data in transit between customers, service providers, and OpenAI. Essentially, these protocols ensure data confidentiality and security. Furthermore, the company added that its data protection practices can support compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy laws, and adhere to the CSA STAR and SOC 2 Type 2 standards. In February, it was reported that OpenAI has initiated discussions to set up data centre operations in India. Currently, most of Openai's servers are based in data centres in Texas, United States, and the company relies on Microsoft's Azure Cloud services to serve users globally, including India. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visited India earlier this year and reiterated that India is the company's second-largest market. Over the past year, the company has tripled its user base in India. "I see people in India are building with AI at all levels of the stack - chips, models, you know, all of the incredible applications. So, I think India should be doing everything. I think India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution," Altman said during a fireside chat with IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

OpenAI enables local data storage in India and key Asian markets

OpenAI has launched data residency in India and other Asian countries, including Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. This allows ChatGPT Enterprise, Edu, and API users in these regions to store data locally, helping organisations meet data sovereignty requirements while ensuring privacy and compliance for AI solutions.OpenAI has introduced data residency in India and several other Asian countries, including Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. This means that data from Indian users of ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API (application programming interface) will now be stored locally. The move is aimed at helping organisations meet local data sovereignty requirements when using OpenAI's services in their businesses and building new solutions with AI. "With data residency, eligible API customers and new ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu customers can choose to have customer content stored at rest in supported countries," said the company in a blog. This change ensures that conversations, user prompts, uploaded files, and other content shared with ChatGPT or custom GPTs by India-based Enterprise and Edu users -- across text, images, and vision -- will stay within the country. To use this feature, eligible API customers can go to the API Platform dashboard, create a new project, and select the preferred country. "As of now, data storage for the API platform will be stored in the selected region," said OpenAI. The company added, "Data residency builds on OpenAI's robust data privacy, security, and compliance features, which support hundreds of organizations partnering with OpenAI across Asia today -- from start-ups and large enterprises to academic institutions -- including Kakao, SoftBank, Grab, Singapore Airlines, and many more." In February, when CEO Sam Altman visited the country, he mentioned that India is now OpenAI's second-biggest market. He added that the company had tripled its user base in the country over the past year. Also Read: Interview: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on DeepSeek's rise, India's AI opportunity, and Stargate's massive funding "India is an incredibly important market for AI, in general, and for OpenAI in particular," Altman said. "It's really quite amazing to see what the country has done -- embraced the technology and built the entire stack of things on top of it."

OpenAI Enables Local Data Storage In India OpenAI Enables Local Data Storage In India

While ChatGPT Enterprise is a version of ChatGPT, customised for businesses,ChatGPT Edu is built for universities to deploy AI to campus operations Artificial Intelligence giant OpenAI has launched data residency in India and other Asian countries, including Japan and South Korea, enabling these regions to store data locally. This will help Indian users meet local data sovereignty requirements while using OpenAI products - OpenAI API, ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu. For the application programming interface platform, OpenAI API and ChatGPT for businesses, ChatGPT Enterprises, data is owned by the user and remains confidential. With data residency, the data control by the organisations and businesses will be enhanced in the aforementioned countries. "Data residency builds on OpenAI's existing enterprise-grade data privacy, security, and compliance features," the company said. While ChatGPT Enterprise is a version of ChatGPT, customised for businesses, offering security, privacy, and management features, ChatGPT Edu is built for universities to deploy AI to campus operations and assist students, faculty and researchers with artificial intelligence. Notably, the OpenAI API is a set of tools that allows developers to access and use OpenAI's models within their own applications by integrating advanced AI capabilities like text generation and natural language processing in their projects. On the API platform, "eligible customers can enable data residency by creating a new project in the API Platform dashboard and selecting the relevant country. As of now, data storage for the API platform will be stored in the selected region," it said. The development comes at a time when the Sam Altman-led company is planning to set up data centre operations in India. OpenAI is in initial discussions to set up the data centre in the country, Business Standard reported earlier this year. Besides, OpenAI and social media major Meta are reportedly looking to strike partnership with Indian conglomerate Reliance on new AI businesses. As per The Information, sources said that US-based company is looking to partner with Reliance's telecom arm Jio to distribute or sell its AI offerings, including ChatGPT. The talks reportedly saw Reliance, which also offers cloud, considering a proposal to sell OpenAI's models to its enterprise customers through an API. However, the deal may see the involvement of Microsoft, which has the exclusive rights to resell OpenAI models to businesses through an API. Earlier this year, the GenAI giant also rolled out its AI agent "Operator" in multiple countries, including India, for its Pro users amid the rise of agentic AI worldwide. Operator is an AI agent from OpenAI which can perform several tasks for the user. For instance, it can look at a webpage and interact with it by typing, clicking, and scrolling. OpenAI is also caught in a legal tussle with Indian media agency ANI and other media outlets and publications. ANI filed a lawsuit before the Delhi High Court (HC) against OpenAI last year for use of copyrighted material by the AI company to train their foundational models. However, OpenAI earlier this year told the Delhi HC that it does not use the content of Indian media groups to train its AI chatbot ChatGPT.