On February 5, OpenAI's Chief Executive Sam Altman met with India's IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to discuss India's initiative of establishing an affordable AI ecosystem. According to Vaishnaw, the meeting entailed a conversation on India's strategy of creating the entire AI stack - GPUs, model, and apps, with OpenAI expressing interest in collaborating on all fronts.
Altman's visit to India, his first since 2023, is strategically timed as the company navigates challenges in the country, its second-largest market in terms of users. Vaishnaw praised Chinese startup DeepSeek last week for disrupting the sector with its cost-effective AI assistant, drawing parallels to his government's efforts to develop a localized AI framework.
Vaishnaw underscored the idea of achieving cost efficiency, drawing a comparison to India's frugal lunar mission success, stating, Our country sent a mission to the moon at a fraction of the cost that many other countries did right, why can't we do a model that will be a fraction of the cost that many others do? This sentiment was echoed in a video snippet from the discussion with Altman that Vaishnaw shared.
Altman's journey to India follows recent visits to Japan and Korea, where agreements were reached with SoftBank Group and Kakao. In Seoul, discussions were also held with SoftBank and Samsung regarding the Stargate AI data center project, which has received support from U.S. President Donald Trump.