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

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman plans to visit India in mid-February, his first visit to the country in almost a year, TechCrunch has learned. The visit comes as New Delhi prepares to host a major AI summit expected to attract top executives from Meta, Google and Anthropic.

India is hosting its first major AI event: the India AI Impact Summit 2026 – in New Delhi between February 16 and 20, where global technology leaders including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei will meet with key Indian business executives such as Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, according to the summit website. Altman is not currently listed as a confirmed participant.

But TechCrunch has learned that OpenAI separately plans to host closed-door meetings on the sidelines of the summit in New Delhi, where Altman is expected to attend. The company is also hosting an OpenAI event in New Delhi on February 19, to which venture capitalists and industry executives have been invited, a person familiar with the matter said.

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

Several other American companies are also planning side events around the summit week. Anthropic will host a developer day in Bengaluru on February 16, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Nvidia will also hold an evening event in New Delhi during the peak week, people familiar with the plans told TechCrunch. (The GPU maker did not respond to requests for comment.) The cluster of events underscores how global AI companies are trying to engage India’s enterprise customers, startup ecosystem and developer community.

The trip would mark Altman’s first visit to India in almost a year traveled to the country in February 2025. Altman had previously said it was scheduled to return later in 2025 following OpenAI’s August announcement of an office in New Delhi, but that trip did not happen.

Altman’s visit also comes as India has emerged as a key growth market for U.S. AI companies. In recent months, Anthropic announced an office in Bengaluru and appointed former Microsoft India executive Irina Ghose as local head, while Google and Perplexity have forged partnerships with Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel respectively to bundle premium AI plans for millions of telecom users.

OpenAI has been expanding its presence in India in recent months hire in enterprise sales, technical implementation and legal roles focused on AI regulation. The company is currently listing vacancies in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. India originated as ChatGPT’s largest market in terms of downloads And second largest by users. Still, OpenAI has faced challenges in converting that demand into paid subscriptions, introducing a cheaper “ChatGPT Go” subscription last year for less than $5 and offering it free for a year to increase adoption.

Altman is expected to meet with key tech executives, startup founders and government officials during the trip, the sources said, as OpenAI looks to expand ChatGPT’s enterprise adoption while expanding its reach as a mass-market product. The company has reached out to multiple sectors in India, including education and media, the people added.

OpenAI also views India as a potential base for infrastructure expansion, the sources said. Last year, both Google and Microsoft announced multi-billion dollar investments in India to expand their AI and cloud footprints. But India’s data center ambitions faced with limitations including uneven energy availability, high energy costs and water scarcity in different regions – factors that could slow the buildout of AI infrastructure and increase operating costs for cloud providers.

Still, the Indian government is hopeful that the upcoming summit will cement India’s status as a destination for large-scale AI investments. The country’s IT minister said in a recent interview that the event could help attract as much as $100 billion of investments. The federal government also encourages domestic startups to do this build smaller models for local use cases, ultimately reducing dependence on US systems.

OpenAI, India’s IT ministry and the organizers of the AI ​​summit did not respond to requests for comment.