OpenAI chief dubs Indian market important amid DeepSeek challenge

​By Ahmad Adil

NEW DELHI (AA) – OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Wednesday India is an important market for the development of artificial intelligence (AI) amid challenges triggered by the emergence of Chinese AI company DeepSeek that stunned the world.

Altman visited India on Wednesday, where he discussed with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw the country's plan for creating an AI ecosystem.

Vaishnaw said he had “super cool discussion” with Atlman on the strategy of creating the “entire AI stack - GPUs, model, and apps.”

“Willing to collaborate with India on all three,” he wrote on X, adding the Open AI chief appreciated Indian Prime Minister NarendraModi’s vision.

Altman during a fireside chat with Vaishnaw described India as an “incredibly important marcket 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,” he said.

He added that India should be “one of the leaders of the AI revolution.”

DeepSeek unveiled a chatbot in January, which matched the performance level of US rivals, apparently at a much lower cost. It sparked a global tech sell-off and is said to have become the most downloaded free app in the US.

India, which announced a $1.25 billion AI investment last March, recently said the country is all set to launch its own safe and secure indigenous AI model at a comparatively low cost.

​​​​​​​Meanwhile, reports suggested India's Finance Ministry has asked its employees to avoid using AI tools including ChatGPT and DeepSeek for official purposes, citing risks posed to confidentiality of government documents and data.