Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw meets OpenAI’s Sam Altman, discusses collaboration

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, pictured above [File]
| Photo Credit: AP

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Wednesday said that the country is important for Artificial Intelligence and OpenAI, and added that India – with its full stack model – should be among the leaders of the AI revolution.

Altman, during a fireside chat with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, said OpenAI tripled its users here in the last year. He gave a ringing endorsement to India’s efforts in building on AI at all levels of the stack, chips, models and “the incredible applications”.

“India is an incredibly important market for AI in general, for open AI in particular, it’s our second biggest market. Tripled users here in the last year, but mostly seeing what people in India are building with AI at all levels of the stack, chips, models, you know, all of the incredible applications,” Altman, who is on a whirlwind India tour, said.

Altman advocated for India to go all out in its AI play. “I think India should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution. But it’s really quite amazing to see what the country has done… embraced the technology and is building the entire stack of things on top of it,” Altman said.

Asked about his advice, as India looks to have a global voice in AI and take a leadership position, Altman said “it seems to me like it’s working”. Altman’s bullish view on India’s AI efforts is a telling statement, given that he had faced a backlash in 2023, when he had expressed doubts about powerful AI models emerging outside of the United State.

During the fireside chat on Wednesday, IT Minister Vaishnaw said that innovation can come from anywhere in the world and “why shouldn’t it come from India?”

Altman’s visit, his second one in two years, comes at an interesting juncture when OpenAI’s (and indeed the western world’s) dominance in artificial intelligence has abruptly been challenged by Chinese upstart DeepSeek, which turned heads with its low-cost AI model R1, built at less than $6 million and guzzling a fraction of compute power when compared to popular models like ChatGPT.

Deepseek overtook ChatGPT as the top-ranked free app on Apple’s App Store, as the US tech industry – that has long-justified injecting billions of dollars into AI investments – watched in sheer disbelief last week.

AI chipmaker and Wall Street superstar Nvidia shed $590 billion in market capitalisation last Monday, suffering the single greatest one-day value wipeout of any firm in history.

Ahead of Altman’s visit, a 2023 video of him — where he had expressed doubts about powerful AI models emerging outside of the United States – has also resurfaced.

The US has been accelerating its AI efforts and just last month, President Donald Trump announced up to $500 billion private sector investment to fund artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The new company, Stargate, which is being created in partnership with Oracle, SoftBank and Microsoft-backed Open AI, would add to tech companies’ large investments in US data centres, huge buildings full of servers that provide massive computing power.

On Monday, Japanese technology giant SoftBank Group and OpenAI stepped up their AI partnership with a 50:50 held company – SB OpenAI Japan.

Altman’s visit also assumes significance as OpenAI is facing legal hurdles in India, including cases involving claims of copyright breaches. OpenAI has, however, reportedly maintained it only uses publicly available data and has argued that Indian courts have no jurisdiction to hear the matter.

With the global tech landscape becoming increasingly dynamic and complex, India is fortifying its sovereign interests with its own AI model.

Last week, India outlined global AI ambitions with plans to build its own ‘foundational model’ that could take on the might of ChatGPT, DeepSeek R1, and others, as it lined up “most affordable” common compute facility powered by 18,693 GPUs to be used by startups and researchers, for creating Artificial Intelligence applications, and new algorithms.

IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that India is all set to launch its own safe and secure indigenous AI model at an affordable cost. He said compared to global models costing $2.5-3 per hour of usage, India’s AI Model will cost less than ₹100 per hour after a 40% government subsidy.

The minister had expressed confidence that India will build a foundational model that is world class, and that it will be able to compete with best models across the globe.