India May Beat US as ChatGPT's Biggest Market, Says OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

India is rapidly emerging as a global hub for artificial intelligence, and OpenAI is taking notice. With the launch of GPT-5, the company behind ChatGPT is doubling down on its focus in the country. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently stated that India is now the company's second-largest market in the world after the United States, and could soon take the lead. 

"India is our second-largest market in the world after the US, and it may well become our largest market. It's incredibly fast-growing, but what users are doing with AI, what citizens of India are doing with AI, is really quite remarkable," Altman said at the global launch of GPT-5.

He highlighted OpenAI's focus on the region, saying the company is actively engaging with Indian partners to make AI more accessible and better suited to Indian users. Altman also announced plans to travel to India in September, highlighting the strategic significance of the market.

“We’re especially focused on bringing products to India, working with local partners to make AI work great for India and make it more affordable for people across the country. We’ve been paying a lot of attention here, given the rate of growth, and I am excited to come for a visit in September.”

 GPT-5: Powering India's AI Leap

OpenAI's newly launched GPT-5 model brings substantial improvements, especially in coding and autonomous (agentic) tasks. A key highlight for Indian users is enhanced support for local languages. According to Nick Turley, Head of ChatGPT, GPT-5 now offers significantly better understanding across more than 12 Indian languages, enabling broader accessibility and more meaningful interactions.

Developers will also have three scalable implementations of the model - gpt-5, gpt-5-mini, and gpt-5-nano - to provide options that trade off performance, cost, and latency.

India's AI Industry Booming - But Faces a Talent Crunch

OpenAI's optimality is part of a larger trend in India's AI ecosystem. According to a recent Bain & Company report, AI job postings in India have increased by 21% annually since 2019, with salaries rising by 11% year-over-year. This is a sign of the increasing footprint of AI in sectors such as healthcare, finance, retail, and education.

But this growth has also revealed a key challenge: an increasingly broadening talent gap. According to Bain & Company, while India is likely to have 1.2 million AI professionals by 2027, demand will far outstrip that, leaving more than 1 million AI jobs potentially unfilled.

This deficit risks hindering innovation and restricting India's potential to maximise its AI possibilities, even as GPT-5 models become mainstream.

A Double-Edged Sword: The Promise and the Peril

As models like GPT-5 are rolled out into the world, there are major questions being raised about regulation, ethics, and digital readiness in India's pursuit of AI supremacy. With models now speaking regional languages, the potential for AI-generated misinformation, deepfakes, and automation-induced job displacement increases all the more - especially in industries already susceptible to automation.

There's increasingly also a fear about over-dependence on imported AI models without robust local innovation or policy structures to control their social effects.

India's stance in the international AI competition is as robust as ever. With GPT-5, OpenAI is not only launching a more capable model - it's accessing one of the globe's most energetic tech ecosystems. But in order for India to really be at the forefront, it needs to close its AI talent gap, create solid regulatory frameworks, and provide inclusive digital access.

Read More: OpenAI Launches Smarter, Faster And More Useful ChatGPT-5