OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that India is already ChatGPT’s second-largest market, and the company now seems to be doubling down on the nation.
OpenAI will open an office in New Delhi later this year, OpenAI has said. “Opening our first office and building a local team is an important first step in our commitment to make advanced AI more accessible across the country and to build AI for India, and with India,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement.
Given OpenAI has chosen New Delhi to set up its new office, it appears that OpenAI will use this office for policy and government-facing work. OpenAI could’ve chosen to go with India’s tech-focused cities of Bangalore or Hyderabad had it been looking to set up engineering or research teams, but an office in the capital of New Delhi suggests that OpenAI wants to use the office to deal with the government and other policymakers.
OpenAI has already come in the crosshairs of Indian authorities. Indian news agency ANI has sued OpenAI in a Delhi court for using its content to train its models. The lawsuit is similar to other lawsuits brought by publishers like the New York Times, which claim that OpenAI illegally used their data to create its models without any financial payments.
But OpenAI also has a rapidly-developing market in India. In February this year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had come to India and met government officials and entrepreneurs. When the Ghibli trend had taken off in India in a big way, Altman had said that India was outpacing the world in AI adoption, and that India was its fastest-growing market. He’d also reposted Ghibli images shared by some official Indian government accounts, and even created a Ghibli image of himself in an Indian cricket jersey. Earlier this month, OpenAI had picked India to globally launch its Go plan, which offered higher rate limits for ChatGPT for Rs. 399 a month.
With all this activity taking place in India, it does make sense for OpenAI to set up shop in the country, and its New Delhi office seems to be a step in that direction. Other top tech giants with large user-bases also have offices in the NCR region including Google, Meta and Microsoft. And with ChatGPT now the fifth-most visited website in the world, it is about time that it has a New Delhi office.