OpenAI chief Sam Altman said on Wednesday that India is now the second-largest market for OpenAI, with the company having tripled its user base in the country over the past year.
Altman, who is currently visiting India, emphasised that the country should be among the leaders of the AI revolution. The OpenAI founder is also scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi today.
OpenAI is the creator of the generative AI platform ChatGPT.
“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,” Altman said during a fireside chat.
Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw was also part of the discussion with Altman. Vaishnaw stated, “India is focusing on designing chips, building foundational models, and developing AI applications.”
Altman’s visit to India comes at a time when the Chinese foundational model DeepSeek has gained popularity due to its significantly lower costs compared to companies like OpenAI, which have invested vast sums in building their foundational models.
“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,” Altman said.
During his previous visit to India in 2023, Altman remarked that companies worldwide, including in India, might find it difficult to build a product like ChatGPT.
“It’s totally impossible to rival us in training these core models, and we’d advise you not to even attempt it. But it’s your responsibility to try anyway. I genuinely believe in both those aspects. I reckon it’s quite a futile pursuit,” Altman had said.
Following controversy and backlash over his comments, Altman later clarified that his remarks had been taken out of context.
“This was really taken out of context! The question was about competing with us with $10 million, which I really do think is not going to work. But I still said try! However, I think it’s the wrong question,” Altman tweeted at the time.
During the event, Altman reiterated that his comments on whether India could develop large language models (LLMs) had been misinterpreted.
On building AI models at lower costs, Altman said, “We are now in a world where we have made incredible progress with distillation. We have learned to develop small models, particularly reasoning models. It’s not cheap—it’s still expensive to train them—but this will lead to an explosion of great creativity.”
“India should be a leader in this space, of course,” Altman added.
He explained that there are two perspectives on the cost of AI models. While costs will continue to rise on an exponential curve, the returns on increased intelligence will also grow exponentially.