OpenAI chief Sam Altman plans India visit as AI leaders converge in New Delhi: sources

OpenAI chief Sam Altman plans India visit as AI leaders converge in New Delhi: sources

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is planning to visit India in mid-February, his first visit to the nation in practically a 12 months, TechCrunch has discovered. The visit comes as New Delhi prepares to host a major AI summit anticipated to attract top executives from Meta, Google, and Anthropic.

India is internet hosting its first major AI event — the India AI Impact Summit 2026 — in New Delhi between February 16 and 20, bringing together global technology leaders including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei alongside key Indian enterprise figures like Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, per the summit’s web site. Altman is just not at present listed as a confirmed attendee.

But TechCrunch has discovered that OpenAI is individually planning to host closed-door conferences on the sidelines of the summit in New Delhi, the place Altman is predicted to be current. The company is also internet hosting an OpenAI event in New Delhi on February 19, with enterprise capitalists and business executives invited, one individual aware of the matter said.

Altman’s visit has not been publicly announced and plans may still change, the sources said.

Several other U.S. firms are also planning aspect occasions round the summit week. Anthropic is internet hosting a builders’ day in Bengaluru on February 16, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Nvidia is also set to carry a night event in New Delhi during the summit week, people aware of the plans told TechCrunch. (The GPU-maker didn’t reply to requests for remark.) The cluster of occasions underscores how global AI corporations are looking for to interact India’s enterprise clients, startup ecosystem, and developer community.

The journey would mark Altman’s first visit to India in practically a 12 months, after he travelled to the nation in February 2025. Altman had beforehand said he deliberate to return later in 2025 following OpenAI’s August announcement of a New Delhi workplace, however that journey didn’t happen.

Altman’s visit also comes as India has emerged as a key progress marketplace for American AI firms. In current months, Anthropic announced an workplace in Bengaluru and named former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose as its local head, while Google and Perplexity have struck partnerships with Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, respectively, to bundle premium AI subscriptions for tens of millions of telecom customers.

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OpenAI has been increasing its India presence in current months, hiring across enterprise sales, technical deployment and authorized roles centered on AI regulation. The company is at present itemizing openings in New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. India has emerged as ChatGPT’s largest market by downloads and second-largest by customers. Still, OpenAI has confronted challenges changing that demand into paid subscriptions, introducing a lower-priced “ChatGPT Go” plan last 12 months priced under $5 and providing it free for a 12 months to drive uptake.

Altman is predicted to satisfy key tech executives, startup founders, and authorities officers during the journey, the sources said, as OpenAI appears to increase ChatGPT’s enterprise adoption while still broadening its attain as a mass-market product. The company has been partaking with a number of sectors in India, including training and media, the people added.

OpenAI is also India as a possible base for infrastructure expansion, the sources said. Last 12 months, each Google and Microsoft announced multi-billion-dollar investments in India to increase their AI and cloud footprint. But India’s data-center ambitions face constraints including uneven energy availability, high vitality prices and water shortage in a number of areas — elements that may slow the build-out of AI infrastructure and lift working prices for cloud suppliers.

Still, the Indian authorities is hopeful that the upcoming summit will cement India’s standing as a vacation spot for large-scale AI funding. The nation’s IT minister said in a current interview that the event may assist entice as a lot as $100 billion in funding. The federal authorities is also pushing home startups to build smaller fashions for local use circumstances, ultimately lowering reliance on U.S.-based programs.

OpenAI, India’s IT ministry, and the AI summit’s organizers didn’t reply to requests for remark.

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