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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said India is uniquely positioned to emerge as a ‘full-stack AI leader’, citing its deep technology talent, national strategy, and strong public optimism toward artificial intelligence. Writing ahead of his visit to the Global AI Impact Summit, Altman noted that the world’s largest democracy combines homegrown expertise with a policy framework aimed at deploying AI at scale.
He pointed to the government’s IndiaAI Mission as a key driver, designed to expand compute capacity, support startups, and accelerate multilingual applications across healthcare, agriculture, and public services. The goal, he said, is to make AI an ‘essential tool for hundreds of millions of people’.
India’s rapid uptake of AI tools has made it OpenAI’s second-largest market, with about 100 million weekly active users, Altman said. The country also has the highest number of students using ChatGPT globally and ranks fourth in adoption of Prism, the company’s free research and collaboration platform.
This scale, he added, creates the foundation for India not just to consume AI but to build and shape it.
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Altman stressed that widening AI’s benefits depends on three factors: access, adoption, and agency. People can access technology that helps them learn through AI and use it to make better decisions and learn faster. His warning pointed to the danger that restricted access would lead to productivity and economic benefits being distributed unevenly, which he described as a ‘capability overhang’.
The main focus areas for this research include infrastructure development, literacy promotion, and trust establishment.
Altman presented OpenAI’s India development plan, which included three main areas of focus: increasing AI literacy, developing computing and energy infrastructure, and implementing AI solutions in real-world business operations. “Infrastructure is destiny,” he said, while underscoring that safety and reliability must keep pace with capability to build trust.
OpenAI, which opened its first office in India in Delhi last year, plans to deepen partnerships with the government. “AI will help define India’s future, and India will help define AI’s future,” Altman said.
