Google and Meta had laid out plans for their Indian AI efforts last week, and now one of their chief rivals is looking to shore up its Indian AI play.
OpenAI plans to build a large datacenter in India, Bloomberg reports. The company is reportedly scouting local partners to set up a data center in India with at least 1 gigawatt capacity. The location of the facility is not yet known, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman could announce it during his India visit later this month. OpenAI did not comment on the report.
The plan to build a large new data center could mark a major step forward for OpenAI’s Stargate AI infrastructure push. The project was announced in January 202 and initially committed to a $500 billion investment over four years to build AI infrastructure. The announcement had been made in the presence of US President Donald Trump, and SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX were the main backers of the project.
The first phase of Stargate involves $100 billion immediately deployed focusing on sites like Stargate I in Abilene, Texas, which includes 4.5 GW in partnership with Oracle and overall over 5 GW of data center capacity under development. Stargate Norway is another planned European data center initiative targeting 230 MW initially with ambitions for 290 MW expansion through partnerships.
OpenAI now wants reportedly wants to set up a datacenter that is four times larger than its Europe datacenter in India. India is turning out to be an important market for the company. After the Ghibli trend had gone viral in India, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had said that India was outpacing the rest of the world in AI adoption. OpenAI had said that India was its fastest-growing market, and its second-largest market overall. OpenAI had started off the global launch of its Go plan with India, and last month had announced an office in New Delhi, and begun hiring for sales roles across Bengaluru, Mumbai and the NCR region.
An OpenAI datacenter will fit it neatly into India’s plans. India has been looking to attract investments in the AI and semiconductor space, with Reliance having already announced a “gigawatt-scale” AI datacenter in India in partnership with Google. Moreover, having an India datacenter would mean that Indian data could potentially remain within India when processed by ChatGPT. It remains to be seen if the plan materializes, but the stars seem to be aligning towards OpenAI setting up a datacenter in India.