India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

Altman also clarified on his comment on making cost-effective LLMs, made during last India visit in 2023.

India has become OpenAI’s second-largest market, with users tripling over the past year, CEO Sam Altman said on February 5 during a fireside chat with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

"India is an incredibly important market for AI, in general, and OpenAI in particular. It's our second biggest market -- users tripled here in the last year," Altman said during his second visit to India.

Altman, who is on a multi-country tour, emphasised India’s potential in the global AI landscape, stating, "I see people in India are building with AI at all levels of the stack -- Chips, models, you know, all of the incredible applications. So, I think India should be doing everything. I think India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution."

Altman also clarified on his comment on making cost-effective LLMs, made during last India visit in 2023. Altman said his comments on India being able to make or not being able to make LLMs were taken out of context.

In 2023, during his India visit, Altman was asked if a small team can create a significant AI model at a small budget of roughly $10 million, to which OpenAI CEO had replied, "It’s totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models."

His view appears to have changed in light of recent developments from Chinese startup DeepSeek, which unveiled a large language model (LLM) claimed to be built at a much lower cost than OpenAI’s models.

Altman acknowledged the progress India has made, saying, "It's really quite amazing to see what the country has done and embraced the technology and building the entire stack of things on top of it."

Recently, IT minister Vaishnaw announced that India will be developing multiple foundational models within 10 months. The government has identified 5-6 startups capable of developing the same, under the IndiaAI mission.