OpenAI's Altman meets with India IT minister to discuss country's AI plans

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman met with India's IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday and discussed India's plan of creating a low-cost AI ecosystem.

Vaishnaw said in a post on X that he had a "super cool discussion" with Altman on India's "strategy of creating the entire AI stack - GPUs, model, and apps" and that OpenAI was willing to collaborate on all three.

Altman's India visit, his first since 2023, comes at a time when the company faces legal challenges in the country, its second-largest market by number of users.

Vaishnaw last week praised Chinese startup DeepSeek for shaking up the sector with its low-cost AI assistant, likening its frugal approach to his government's efforts to build a localised AI model.

"Our country sent a mission to the moon at a friction of the cost that many other countries did right, why can't we do a model that will be a fraction of the cost that many others do?" Vaishnaw said in a video of part of the discussion with Altman that he posted.

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Altman's trip to India follows visits to Japan and Korea. He clinched deals with SoftBank Group and Kakao . In Seoul, he also held talks with SoftBank and Samsung about the Stargate AI data centre project that has been backed by U.S. President Donald Trump.