OpenAI CEO Sam Altman plans to visit India in mid-February, his first visit to the country in nearly a year, according to TechCrunch. The visit comes as New Delhi prepares to host a major AI summit expected to attract top executives from Meta, Google and Anthropic.
India hosts its first major AI event — the India AI Impact Summit 2026 — in New Delhi between February 16 and 20, bringing together global technology leaders such as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, along with key Indian figures 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 is separately planning to host closed-door meetings on the sidelines of the summit in New Delhi, where Altman is expected to be in attendance. The company is also hosting an OpenAI event in New Delhi on February 19, with venture capitalists and industry executives 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 US companies are also planning side events during the week of the summit. Anthropic is hosting a developer day in Bengaluru on February 16, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Nvidia is also set to hold an evening event in New Delhi during the week of the summit, people familiar with the plans told TechCrunch. (The GPU maker did not respond to requests for comment.) The cluster of events highlights how global AI companies are seeking to engage India’s enterprise customers, startup ecosystem and developer community.
The trip would mark Altman’s first visit to India in nearly a year traveled the country in February 2025. Altman previously said that planned to return later in 2025 after OpenAI announced in August an office in New Delhi, but that trip did not materialize.
Altman’s visit also comes as India has emerged as a key growth market for US AI companies. In recent months, Anthropic announced an office in Bengaluru and named former Microsoft India CEO Irina Ghose as its local head, while Google and Perplexity have partnered with Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, respectively, to bundle premium AI subscriptions for millions of telecom users.
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OpenAI has been expanding its presence in India in recent months, recruitment in business sales, technical development and legal roles focused on AI regulation. The company is currently introducing openings in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. India emerged as ChatGPT’s largest marketplace with downloads and second largest than users. But OpenAI has faced challenges converting that demand into paid subscriptions, introducing a lower-priced “ChatGPT Go” plan last year priced under $5 and offering it free for a year to boost its uptake.
Altman is expected to meet key tech executives, startup founders and government officials during the trip, the sources said, as OpenAI tries to expand enterprise adoption of ChatGPT while still expanding its reach as a mass-market product. The company is involved in multiple sectors in India, including education and media, the people added.
OpenAI is also looking at India as a possible 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 footprint. But India’s data center ambitions face limitationsincluding uneven power availability, high energy costs, and water scarcity in several regions — factors that could slow the creation of AI infrastructure and increase operational costs for cloud providers.
However, the Indian government hopes the upcoming summit will cement India’s status as a destination for large-scale AI investment. The country’s IT minister said in a recent interview that the event could help attract up to $100 billion in investments. The federal government is also cracking down on domestic startups making smaller models for local use cases, ultimately reducing reliance on US-based systems.
OpenAI, India’s IT ministry, and the organizers of the AI Summit did not respond to requests for comment.
