4 hours Ago By Priya Singh
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, announced that India has become the company's second-largest market, with its user base tripling in the past year. During his visit to India, Altman highlighted the country's potential to be a leader in the AI revolution. He stated during a fireside chat, “India is an incredibly important market for AI in general and OpenAI in particular.
It is our second-biggest market, and we tripled our users here last year.” "India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution" - Sam Altman pic.twitter.
com/1dd1TN0jvP — Sahil (@sahilypatel) February 5, 2025 During a discussion with Sam Altman, Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw highlighted India's focus on chip design, foundational models, and AI applications. Altman’s visit coincides with the rise of China's DeepSeek model, which is gaining traction due to its lower costs compared to OpenAI's investments. Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stated, “India is focusing on designing chips, building foundational models, and developing AI applications.
” ALSO SEE: Apple Introduces A New App Called 'Invites' To Create Personalised Invites: How It Works Altman's visit to India coincides with the rising popularity of China’s DeepSeek model, which offers lower costs than OpenAI. He praised India’s advancements in AI, highlighting its achievements in building stacks, chips, models, and applications. Altman said, “Mostly, I’m seeing what people in India are building—the stack, chips, models, and all the incredible applications.
India should be doing everything. It’s really quite amazing to see what the country has achieved.” 🚨"I don't think we're yet at the technological level where any of us should expect these models to go cure cancer on their own," says Sam Altman on OpenAI's India agenda.
@sama @OpenAI #SamAltman #OpenAI #ChatGPT #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Technology #India #AshwiniVaishnaw pic.twitter.com/X42bcR3Htu — Moneycontrol (@moneycontrolcom) February 5, 2025 During his 2023 visit to India, Altman warned that building a product like ChatGPT would be extremely challenging for companies globally, including those in India.
He stated that rivaling OpenAI’s core models would be impossible for many, suggesting that attempting such a feat with limited resources would be futile. This statement sparked backlash, leading Altman to clarify that his remarks were taken out of context, specifically regarding the practicality of competing with OpenAI on a $10 million budget. Despite this, he encouraged others to try, but emphasized that it was the wrong approach.
In a more recent discussion, Altman reiterated that his comments about India's ability to develop large language models (LLMs) were misinterpreted. He acknowledged that while developing AI models remains expensive, advancements in distillation and smaller models would drive creativity in the field. He emphasized that India should lead in AI development, acknowledging that while the costs of training AI models will rise, the returns on increased intelligence will also grow exponentially, leading to great potential for innovation.
He is also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi today..
