OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is back in India, and this time, he has a lot to say about the country’s growing role in artificial intelligence. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw took to his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to mention, “PM Narendra Modi Ji guides us to democratise technology. Sam appreciated PM’s vision.”
Speaking at an event in New Delhi alongside IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw today on February 5, Altman acknowledged that India is now OpenAI’s second-largest market, MoneyControl reported. That’s a big shift from his last visit in 2023 when his comments sparked debate over India’s ability to build large AI models!
Remember the buzz around Altman’s 2023 remark about whether India could build a competitive AI model on a $10 million budget? He had said, “It’s totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models.” Now, he’s clearing things up. “We are now in a world where we have made incredible progress with distillation. Models are still not cheap, but they are doable. India should be a leader there, of course,” the report quoted Sam Altman.
The Cost of AI
One of the biggest discussions in AI right now is how much it actually costs to develop powerful language models. Altman admitted that while AI training remains expensive, it’s not out of reach anymore.
“We can look at costs in two different ways—we believe costs will continue to rise. But returns and economic value will also increase,” he explained. His comments are particularly interesting given the success of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company that built a competitive model without relying on the most advanced Nvidia chips. That raised the question: Do you really need billions of dollars to make a strong AI model?
India’s AI Plan
India is setting its sights high when it comes to AI. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw compared the country’s AI ambitions to its space achievements, saying, “On the same lines that we did the Chandrayaan mission, why can’t we do the same in the LLM space?”
To make this vision a reality, the Indian government has been working on building an AI infrastructure. They’ve already set up a high-end computing system with 10,000 GPUs and plan to add more soon. Sam Altman’s latest visit makes one thing clear: OpenAI is paying close attention to India.
Source: Sam Altman Applauds PM Modi’s AI Vision During India Visit: What OpenAI’s CEO said
