Last month, OpenAI announced its first Indian office in New Delhi, set to be opened later this year.
OpenAI is planning a massive new data centre in India, in what could be a “major step forward” for the company’s Stargate project expansion in Asia, Bloomberg reported today (1 September).
Stargate is a $500bn private sector investment project into OpenAI’s artificial intelligence infrastructure over the next four years. The project’s initial equity funders include OpenAI, Oracle, MGX and SoftBank, with Microsoft, Nvidia and Arm among the key technology partners.
Bloomberg cites unnamed sources who told the publication that the ChatGPT maker is scouting local partners to set up a data centre with at least 1GW capacity. The exact location and timeline of OpenAI’s potential project remains unclear. CEO Sam Altman could announce the facility during his visit to India later this month, the report added.
The site could be one of the largest data centres in India, where Google is reportedly investing $6bn for a 1GW data centre facility, and the Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani is building what is reportedly the world’s biggest data centre by capacity.
Earlier this year, OpenAI launched ‘OpenAI for Countries’, a new initiative in Stargate that partners with nations worldwide to help build in-country data centre capacity. The company is coordinating with the US government for this new initiative. It plans to pursue 10 initial projects under the programme.
Bloomberg’s report emerges just after OpenAI announced its first India-based office in New Delhi set to be opened later this year.
The company also launched a new ChatGPT Go plan in the country for less than $5 a month – its cheapest offer yet – which allows users to generate more images and interact with the chatbot more frequently than the free version. The plan extends to OpenAI’s latest GPT-5 model.
The India-only offer comes as OpenAI targets the world’s most populated country. In an X post last month, Altman said that ChatGPT users in the country grew four-fold in the past year. “We are excited to invest much more in India!,” he added. India is OpenAI’s second largest market by user base.
The company has also committed to work with the Indian government’s $1.2bn IndiaAI Mission, which aims to leverage the tech for economic growth.
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