India becomes OpenAI’s second largest market as user base triples, says Sam Altman

Altman highlights India’s role in AI growth during visit

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on Wednesday that India is now the second-largest market for the company, with its user base tripling in the past year. Altman made the statement during a fireside chat, highlighting the country’s growing influence in the AI space.

India’s expanding AI ecosystem

Altman, currently on a global tour, arrived in India on Tuesday night. His visit includes meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, along with discussions with Indian startups and venture capital firms.

“India is an incredibly important market for AI in general and OpenAI in particular. It is our second-biggest market, and we tripled our users here in the last year,” Altman said.

Vaishnaw also addressed the event, outlining India’s three-pronged approach to AI, which focuses on:

• Designing AI chips
• Building foundational AI models
• Developing AI applications

Altman: “India should be among AI leaders”

Altman praised India’s growing AI capabilities, stating:

“It’s amazing to see what India is building—the stack, the chips, the models, and the incredible applications. India should be doing everything. It should be among the leaders of the AI revolution.”

Rise of DeepSeek and cost-efficient AI models

Altman’s visit coincides with the rapid rise of DeepSeek, a Chinese foundational AI model developed at a fraction of OpenAI’s cost. The model has demonstrated that cutting-edge AI models can be built at significantly lower costs, challenging the perception that large investments are necessary.

Many industry analysts view Altman’s global tour as an effort to counter DeepSeek’s growing influence in the AI landscape.

Lowering AI costs and future innovation

Addressing concerns about the declining costs of AI model development, Altman acknowledged the progress in AI distillation and efficiency.

“We have learned to build small models and reasoning models. It’s not cheap—it’s still expensive to train them—but this will lead to an explosion of creativity. India should be a leader in this space,” he stated.

Altman discussed two perspectives on AI costs:

• Staying at the frontier: The cost of developing leading AI models will continue rising exponentially.
• Lowering unit costs: The cost of a given unit of intelligence tends to fall tenfold each year, but AI hardware demand remains strong.

Altman’s previous controversy over AI development in India

During his previous visit to India in June 2023, Altman sparked controversy by suggesting that Indian companies may struggle to build a product like ChatGPT.

“It’s totally impossible to rival us in training these core models, and we’d advise you not to attempt it. But it’s your responsibility to try anyway. I genuinely believe in both those aspects. I reckon it’s quite a futile pursuit,” Altman had said at the time.

Following backlash, Altman later clarified his remarks, stating that his comments were taken out of context.

“…This is really taken out of context! The question was about competing with us with $10 million, which I really do think is not going to work. But I still said try! However, I think it’s the wrong question,” Altman tweeted.

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