OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has declared India the company’s most critical international market. Altman’s statement came after a year that saw OpenAI’s user base in India triple, marking the end of a multi-day tour of Asia that included stops in Tokyo and Delhi.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Wednesday said India is now OpenAI’s second-largest market by number of users, which have tripled in the past year. Altman met with India's IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and discussed India's plan of creating a low-cost AI ecosystem.

Some may see it as a sobering effect of the onslaught of China's cost-belting DeepSeek in the global world of AI, but OpenAI founder Sam Altman - who just a year and a half ago dubbed India's ambitions of building foundation AI models with limited budget as a "hopeless" pursuit - now believes the country can be "one of the leaders" in