Sam Altman visits India, calls it the second-biggest market for OpenAI

“India is an incredibly important market for AI in general and OpenAI in particular. It is our second biggest market, we tripled our users here in the last year,” Altman said during a fireside chat as quoted by The Indian Express.

Sam Altman, who has been visiting several nations in recent times, landed in India on Tuesday.

Altman also met Union Minister for Railways and Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw when they discussed the South Asian country's AI ecosystem vision.

He wrote on X:  "Had super cool discussion with @sama on our strategy of creating the entire AI stack - GPUs, model, and apps. Willing to collaborate with India on all three."

He said Sam Altman appreciated Indian PM Narendra Modi's vision of democratising technology.

"PM @narendramodi Ji guides us to democratise technology. Sam appreciated PM's vision," he said.

Challenge from DeepSeek's AI chatbot

Sam Altman visited India at a time when his ChatGPT was perhaps facing a challenge from Chinese firm DeepSeek's AI chatbot.

The launch of the affordable Chinese AI chatbot R1 opened the market that was so far dominated by US companies.

Contrary to the high-cost AI chatbot models like ChatGPT, DeepSeek is believed to have created its own chatbot for less than $6 million.

According to reports, it requires much less computing power, providing an alternative option to consumers.

Surprising the US tech industry, R1 even overtook ChatGPT to become a top free app on Apple’s App Store.

Following the launch, tech major NVIDIA suffered a staggering $590 billion loss in market value.

India's AI vision

Union Minister of Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, last week announced India is set to develop its own foundational AI model in the coming months, underscoring the country's ambitions in the field.

Additionally, he announced the empanelment of 18,693 graphics processing units (GPUs) under a shared computing facility.

Vaishnaw made a series of announcements aimed at positioning India as a key player in the global AI landscape, including plans to establish an AI safety institution.

Vaishnaw stated that the Prime Minister's economic vision focused on making modern technology accessible to everyone.

He also claimed that India currently had the most affordable computing facility.