New Delhi, Feb 19 (IANS) Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, on Thursday said that with the ‘OpenAI for India’ initiative, they are working together to build the infrastructure, skills and local partnerships needed to build “AI with India, for India, and in India”.
At the ‘India AI Impact Summit 2026’ here, the US-based ChatGPT maker launched the nationwide initiative with leading Indian partners to expand access to AI and unlock its economic and societal benefits in the world’s largest democracy.
India is now home to more than 100 million weekly ChatGPT users, from students and teachers to developers and entrepreneurs.
The company said that ‘OpenAI for India’ builds on that momentum, working with leading partners —beginning with Tata Group — to build sovereign AI capabilities, accelerate enterprise adoption, invest in workforce upskilling, and strengthen India’s thriving AI ecosystem.
As part of their global Stargate initiative, OpenAI and Tata Group are partnering to develop local, AI-ready data centre capacity designed for data residency, security, and long-term domestic capability.
OpenAI will become the first customer of Tata Consultancy Services’ HyperVault data centre business, beginning with 100 megawatts of capacity and with potential to scale to 1 gigawatt over time.
“India is already leading the way in AI adoption, and with its homegrown tech talent, optimism about what AI can do for the country, and strong government support, it is well placed to help shape its future and how democratic AI is adopted at scale,” said Altman.
The infrastructure will enable OpenAI’s most advanced models to run securely in India, delivering lower latency while meeting data residency, security, and compliance requirements for mission-critical and government workloads.
“This strategic collaboration between OpenAI and Tata Group marks a major milestone in India’s vision to become a global leader in AI. We are pleased to partner with OpenAI to create state-of-the-art AI infrastructure in India,” said N. Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Sons.
This is a unique opportunity for OpenAI and TCS to transform industries and together, “we will skill India’s youth and empower them to succeed in the AI era,” he mentioned.
Tata Group plans to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise across its employees over the next several years, starting with hundreds of thousands of TCS employees, making it one of the largest enterprise AI deployments in the world.
TCS also intends to use OpenAI’s Codex to standardise AI-native software development across teams.
—IANS
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