OpenAI CEO Sam Altman plans to visit India in mid-February, his first visit to the country in nearly a year, TechCrunch has learned. The visit comes as New Delhi prepares to host a major AI summit expected to attract top executives from Meta, Google, and Anthropic.
India hosted its first major AI event – the India AI Impact Summit 2026 – in New Delhi between February 16 and 20, bringing together global technology leaders including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei along with key Indian business figures such as Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, each summit. website. Altman is not currently listed as a confirmed participant.
But TechCrunch has learned that OpenAI plans to separately host a closed-door meeting on the sidelines of the summit in New Delhi, where Altman is expected to attend. The company is also holding an OpenAI event in New Delhi on February 19, with venture capitalists and industry executives invited, people familiar with the matter said.
Altman’s visit has not been publicly announced and plans are subject to change, the source said.
Several other US companies are also planning side events during the peak week. Anthropic is holding 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 summit week, people familiar with the plans told TechCrunch. (The GPU maker did not respond to a request for comment.) The group of events underscored how global AI companies are seeking to engage with Indian enterprise customers, the startup ecosystem, and the developer community.
The trip will mark Altman’s first visit to India in almost a year, after his travel to the country in February 2025. Altman previously said plan to come back later in 2025 after OpenAI’s August announcement a New Delhi Officebut that trip did not happen.
Altman’s visit also comes as India has emerged as a key growth market for American AI companies. In the new month, Anthropic announced its office in Bengaluru and named former managing director of Microsoft India Irina Ghose is the head of its local, while Google and Fidget has forged a partnership with Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, to bring together premium AI subscriptions for millions of telecom users.
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OpenAI has expanded its Indian presence in recent months, rent between the company’s sales, technical deployment and legal roles focused on AI regulation. The company is currently registering openings in New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. India has emerged as ChatGPT’s largest marketplace with downloads and second largest by users. However, OpenAI has faced the challenge of turning that demand into paid subscriptions, introducing a cheaper “ChatGPT Go” plan Last year it was priced at $5 and free offer for one year to drive uptake.
Altman is expected to meet with key tech executives, startup founders, and government officials during the trip, the source said, as OpenAI looks to expand enterprise adoption of ChatGPT while expanding its reach as a mass-market product. The company has been involved in various sectors in India, including education and media, the people added.
OpenAI is also looking at India as a potential base for infrastructure expansion, the source said. Last year, Google and Microsoft announced multi-billion dollar investment in India for expanding its AI and cloud footprint. But India’s data center ambitions face barrier including uneven power availability, high energy costs and water shortages in some regions – factors that can slow the build-out of AI infrastructure and raise operating costs for cloud providers.
However, the Indian government hopes that the upcoming summit will strengthen 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 $100 billion in investment. The federal government is also encouraging domestic startups build small models for local use cases, ultimately reducing reliance on US-based systems.
OpenAI, India’s IT ministry, and AI Summit organizers did not respond to requests for comment.