Sam Altman’s India Visit: AI Leaders Converge in New Delhi
▼ Summary
– OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is planning a visit to India in mid-February, his first in nearly a year, coinciding with the country’s major India AI Impact Summit 2026.
– While not a confirmed summit attendee, Altman is expected to host closed-door meetings and a separate OpenAI event in New Delhi during the summit week.
– The cluster of events by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia highlights how global AI firms are actively seeking to engage India’s enterprise customers, startups, and developers.
– India is a key growth market for AI companies, evidenced by new offices, partnerships with major telecoms, and being ChatGPT’s biggest market by downloads.
– OpenAI is expanding its India presence with new hires and exploring infrastructure expansion, despite facing challenges like converting users to paid subscriptions and local infrastructure constraints.
The upcoming India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi is poised to become a landmark event, drawing a constellation of global technology leaders to discuss the future of artificial intelligence. While the official summit roster includes figures like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Google’s Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman is also planning a significant visit to the country around the same time. This trip, his first to India in nearly a year, signals a deepening focus on what has become a crucial market for American AI firms.
Although Altman is not listed as a confirmed speaker for the main summit, sources indicate OpenAI is organizing private, closed-door meetings on the sidelines in New Delhi. The company has also scheduled a separate event for February 19th, inviting venture capitalists and industry executives. This flurry of activity mirrors plans by other U.S. giants; Anthropic will host a developers’ day in Bengaluru, and Nvidia is set to hold an evening event in the capital. This collective effort highlights a strategic push to connect with India’s vast enterprise customer base, vibrant startup ecosystem, and extensive developer community.
Altman’s return follows OpenAI’s announcement last August of a New Delhi office, a plan that underscores India’s growing importance. The country represents ChatGPT’s largest market by downloads and its second-largest by total users. To convert this widespread usage into a sustainable business, OpenAI introduced a lower-cost “ChatGPT Go” subscription priced under five dollars, offering it free for a year to boost adoption. The company has been actively hiring across sales, technical, and legal roles in cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.
India’s emergence as a key growth arena is unmistakable. In recent months, Anthropic established a Bengaluru office led by a former Microsoft India executive, while Google and Perplexity have formed partnerships with major telecom providers Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. These deals aim to bundle premium AI subscriptions for millions of mobile users, showcasing a direct route to the mass market.
During his visit, Altman is expected to engage with top tech executives, startup founders, and government officials. These discussions will likely focus on expanding ChatGPT’s enterprise adoption while continuing to nurture its broad consumer appeal. OpenAI has already initiated conversations with sectors such as education and media.
Beyond commercial opportunities, India is also being evaluated as a potential base for infrastructure expansion. This consideration comes after Google and Microsoft announced multi-billion dollar investments to grow their AI and cloud capabilities in the region. However, significant challenges remain, including inconsistent power supply, high energy costs, and regional water scarcity. These factors could impede the rapid development of AI data centers and increase operational expenses.
The Indian government views the upcoming summit as a pivotal moment to attract large-scale AI investment, with ambitions of drawing up to one hundred billion dollars. A parallel strategy involves encouraging domestic startups to develop smaller, specialized AI models for local needs, which would gradually reduce dependence on foreign systems. As global AI leaders converge on New Delhi, the event will test India’s capacity to transform its demographic and digital strengths into a foundational role in the global AI landscape.
(Source: TechCrunch)
