OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said India is becoming one of the most important markets for OpenAI thanks to its huge population size, rapid growth and increasingly extensive partner ecosystem. His statement was made at the OpenAI India event held on February 19 local time in New Delhi.
Earlier on the same day, developer ChatGPT announced the "OpenAI for India" initiative at the 2026 AI Impact Summit, and signed a large-scale infrastructure cooperation agreement with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to take advantage of local data centers to serve the workload of the new generation AI.
According to Mr. Altman, what is happening in India clearly shows three factors: scale, speed and the entire ecosystem.
He emphasized that the energy for technology development in this country is incredible and long-term cooperation will play an important role in realizing the potential of artificial intelligence.
Speaking about the AI development process, OpenAI CEO said that the technology is growing exponentially. He cited that 10 years ago, AI adding two large numbers was considered a remarkable achievement; and two years ago, AI only reached the level of high school math with limited accuracy.
However, up to now, the systems have been able to solve independent research-level problems, even finding solutions to unknown problems.
According to Mr. Altman, the shift of intellectual capacity from humans to data centers will continue to increase, opening up new creativity and value creation for individuals and businesses.
He also emphasized a less discussed but very important issue: security, privacy and data access control when deploying AI in businesses.
Fast-paced companies are companies that understand how to deploy internal AI agents and manage data properly," Altman said, while noting that large businesses need to be particularly cautious because they own actual customer data and complex operating scale.
In the context of the global AI race heating up, OpenAI is optimistic about India's role as a new technology center. Data infrastructure and business cooperation is expected to help this South Asian nation become an important fulcrum for next-generation AI applications.
