OpenAI Doubles Down on India: Ex-Uber Chief Hired, $13B Infrastructure Push, and 100M Weekly Users

OpenAI hires Uber India's former president as MD, partners with Tata for gigawatt-scale data centers, opens three offices, and has 100M+ weekly ChatGPT users in its largest non-US market.

OpenAI just made its biggest non-US bet yet. On June 26, the company hired Prabhjeet Singh, the former president of Uber India and South Asia, as its first Managing Director for India — a hire that signals India is no longer a secondary market for OpenAI but a core strategic priority.

This follows a series of moves that, taken together, paint a clear picture: India is OpenAI's second-largest market after the US, and the company is investing aggressively to lock it down before competitors catch up.

The Hire: Why Prabhjeet Singh Matters

Singh, who led Uber's operations across India and South Asia, announced his resignation from Uber on June 26 and will join OpenAI in September. He'll report to Kiran Mani, OpenAI's managing director for Asia Pacific, according to TechCrunch.

His mandate covers everything: consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement, and operations. That's the full stack of country-level leadership.

The hire is a classic "growth at scale" play. Uber's India story — from a rocky start to market leadership through regulatory fights, partnerships, and operational intensity — is the kind of experience OpenAI needs as it faces its own regulatory and scaling challenges in the world's most populous country.

The Numbers Behind the Bet

OpenAI's India engagement isn't speculative — it's already massive:

• 100+ million weekly ChatGPT users in India as of February 2026, according to OpenAI's official announcement

• 18-24 year olds account for nearly 50% of ChatGPT usage in India, per TechCrunch reporting

• $13 billion from Amazon in fresh AI infrastructure investment (announced June 25) — signaling the entire AI ecosystem is scaling in India, not just OpenAI

• 100MW to 1GW of planned data center capacity via Tata Group's HyperVault business, making OpenAI the first customer

For context: India has more ChatGPT users than the entire population of many countries. The engagement from young users — half of them under 24 — suggests OpenAI is building generational stickiness.

Infrastructure: The Tata Partnership

OpenAI's most tangible commitment is through Project Stargate, its global data center initiative. In February, OpenAI and Tata Group announced a partnership to develop local AI-ready data center capacity starting at 100 megawatts with potential to scale to 1 gigawatt over time.

This isn't just about compute — it's about sovereignty. Running OpenAI's most advanced models on Indian soil means:

• Lower latency for Indian users

• Data residency for regulated industries (finance, healthcare, government)

• Compliance with India's increasingly stringent data localization requirements

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) also plans to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise across hundreds of thousands of employees and use Codex to standardize AI-native software development — making it one of the largest enterprise AI deployments in the world.

Office Expansion: Three Cities

OpenAI opened its first Indian office in New Delhi in August 2025. The company now plans to add offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru later this year, according to the OpenAI for India announcement.

Active job openings in India include roles for AI deployment engineers, developer experience engineers, a developer marketing lead, a partner director, and solutions engineers — listed on OpenAI's careers page.

The Competitive Landscape

OpenAI isn't alone in seeing India's potential. Anthropic opened its Bengaluru office in late 2025 and hired former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose in January 2026 to lead its India operations — as reported by TechCrunch.

The battle for India's AI market is essentially a three-front war: talent, enterprise deals, and regulation. OpenAI is ahead on all three, but Anthropic is closing fast, and Google (with Gemini in India) remains a factor given Android's dominance.

What This Means for Developers in India

If you're building with AI in India, this is good news:

• Lower latency from locally-hosted models starting this year

• More enterprise adoption means more demand for AI-integrated services

• Pricing pressure — as infrastructure scales locally, API costs should decrease over time (no cross-border routing)

• Certification programs — OpenAI is expanding certifications through TCS and educational institutions, including 100,000+ ChatGPT Edu licenses across IIM Ahmedabad, AIIMS Delhi, Manipal Academy, and others

Risks and Open Questions

• Regulatory uncertainty: India's AI regulation framework is still being drafted. A restrictive policy could slow OpenAI's rollout.

• Export control spillover: The US government's recent restrictions on Anthropic and OpenAI models create uncertainty about whether Indian users will always have access to the latest frontier models.

• Competing sovereign AI: India's government is also investing in homegrown models through the IndiaAI Mission. OpenAI's partnership model (data center + enterprise) is designed to coexist with, not replace, sovereign AI efforts.