India can become largest market for ChatGPT, says OpenAI CEO Altman

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sees India overtaking the US as ChatGPT's largest market and confirms plans to visit the country in September to deepen partnerships

India can become the largest market for ChatGPT, given the rapid growth of the large language model (LLM) and its increasing user base in the country, OpenAI founder and Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said.

 

India is currently the second-largest market for large language models after the United States, but may soon overtake it, Altman noted, adding that he was excited about his upcoming visit to India in September.

 

“What the citizens of India are doing with ChatGPT is really remarkable—the way it is being integrated into people’s lives and businesses, starting new companies. We are especially focused on bringing products to India, working with local partners to make AI work great for India,” Altman said. 

 

India has become OpenAI’s second-largest market, and the number of users in the country tripled during 2024, Altman had said during an earlier visit on 5 February. 

 

On Thursday, OpenAI also announced the launch of ChatGPT 5, its latest LLM with enhanced reasoning capabilities. The new model includes significantly improved multilingual understanding and can respond to and interpret 12 Indian languages, including several regional ones, said Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT at OpenAI.

 

“As Sam (Altman) said, India is a priority market for us. So there are clear gains in MMLU (Multitask Language Understanding) across major Indian languages,” Turley added.

 

Earlier this year, in May, OpenAI had announced that data for Indian users of ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu and the OpenAI API (application programming interface) platform would be stored locally. The move is intended to help companies meet data sovereignty requirements when using OpenAI products in their businesses and while building new AI solutions.