Sam Altman to visit India next month

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he will visit India in September as the Microsoft-backed company plans to open an office in its second-largest market.

"We are opening our first office in india later this year! And I'm looking forward to visiting next month," Altman posted on X.



His announcement came as OpenAI announced plans to bring its operations to India. The company has been established as a legal entity in the county and has begun hiring a local team, Reuters reported on Friday, citing a company statement.

"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 the statement.

As per listings on the OpenAI website, the company is looking to hire for sales three positions in India — Account Director, Digital Natives; Account Director, Large Enterprise; and Account Director, Strategics. Applicants need to have at least seven years of experience, Bloomberg reported.

It currently has one employee in the country — Pragya Misra, who joined last year and looks after public policy and partnerships here. The company had onboarded former Twitter (now X) India head Rishi Jaitly in 2023 as a senior advisor to engage the government for talks on AI policy.

Talking to ET earlier this month, Altman said that "incredibly fast-growing" India can surpass the US to become OpenAI's largest market.

ChatGPT’s weekly active users in India have quadrupled over the past year. The country ranks among the top five developer markets globally on the OpenAI platform. It is also has the largest number of student users.

"We are especially focused on bringing products to India, working with local partners to make AI work great for India, (making) it more affordable for people across the country. We've been paying a lot of attention here, given the rate of growth," the OpenAI CEO had said on the sidelines of the launch of its new model, GPT-5.

Earlier this week, the company introduced ChatGPT Go in India, an affordable subscription tier priced at Rs 399 per month (around $4.60). The plan offers a significant upgrade over the free version and is designed to give Indian users wider access to some of ChatGPT’s most popular features.