After a cooler-than-expected reception to GPT-5 and mounting stress from rising coaching, compute and infrastructure prices, OpenAI is seeking to India as a cornerstone of its world enlargement technique. On Friday, CEO Sam Altman introduced on X that the corporate will open its first workplace in New Delhi later this yr. He additionally stated he plans to go to the nation subsequent month, writing, “A.I. adoption in India has been superb to observe—ChatGPT customers grew 4x up to now yr—and we’re excited to speculate far more in India!”
India has turn into OpenAI’s second largest marketplace for ChatGPT, trailing solely the U.S., in accordance with Altman. To attraction to native customers, the corporate has rolled out ChatGPT Go, a $5 monthly subscription pitched as a budget-friendly various to the Plus and Professional tiers ($20 and $200 monthly, respectively). Marketed towards college students and enterprises, ChatGPT Go guarantees entry to premium options similar to longer context reminiscence, larger utilization limits and superior instruments like modifying customized GPTs to construct A.I. instruments tailor-made to particular person wants.
Altman has visited India a number of instances lately, together with a 2023 assembly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the place he praised the nation’s speedy adoption of A.I., saying it has “all of the components to turn into a world A.I. chief.” In June, OpenAI deepened its ties to the nation by partnering with the Indian authorities’s IndiaAI Mission, an initiative to increase A.I. entry nationwide.
However rivals are additionally circling the market. Google and Meta already function main A.I. merchandise and R&D hubs in India, whereas Perplexity AI, based by Indian entrepreneur Aravind Srinivas, is seeing explosive progress. Perplexity’s month-to-month lively customers in India jumped 640 % year-over-year within the second quarter of 2025, far outpacing ChatGPT’s 350 % progress in the identical interval. Whereas ChatGPT positions itself as a conversational assistant, Perplexity markets its device as an A.I.-powered search engine that delivers cited solutions, mixing its personal retrieval-augmented system with fashions from OpenAI and Anthropic.
In April, each OpenAI and Perplexity launched WhatsApp bots globally, aiming to combine A.I.-powered chat and search into on a regular basis messaging. Given WhatsApp’s ubiquity in India, the transfer might show pivotal. “Perplexity on WhatsApp is tremendous handy manner to make use of A.I. when in a flight. Flight WiFi helps messaging apps the perfect. And WhatsApp has been closely optimized for this as a result of it grew to assist nations the place connectivity wasn’t the perfect,” Srinivas wrote on LinkedIn in Might.
OpenAI has been steadily increasing its world footprint, including workplaces in London, Dublin, Paris, Brussels, Munich, Tokyo and Singapore over the previous yr. The corporate is headquartered in San Francisco and in addition maintains U.S. workplaces in New York and Seattle.
