OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's Asia trip could be a rush to counter DeepSeek

Altman, who is on a whirlwind tour of several countries, including Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates, is likely to land in India late on Tuesday night

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OpenAI’s chief executive officer (CEO) Sam Altman is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, and other high-ranking officials on his second visit to India in two years. He is likely to land in India late on Tuesday night.

 

The OpenAI founder is also scheduled to address the developer ecosystem and the venture capitalists during his short stay in the country, a person aware of the development said.

 

PeakXV Managing Director Rajan Anandan as well as executives from venture capital (VC) firms will also be meeting Altman, sources told Business Standard.

 

Altman is on a whirlwind tour of several countries, including Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the UAE.

 

The OpenAI founder was in India in June of 2023. His current Asia visit is being seen by many as a rush to counter the impact of DeepSeek's achievement. The Chinese firm has shown the world that foundational models can be built at a fraction of the cost of what OpenAI has managed to do with.

 

On January 4, OpenAI announced that it will develop AI products for South Korea with chat app operators Kakao. This will be its second major alliance with an Asian player. Earlier this year, OpenAI along with SoftBank announced the Stargate program. This program is planning to invest $500 billion to build AI infrastructure in the US. OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX are the initial investors of $100 billion.

 

In his earlier visit to India, Altman had courted controversy when he said that companies across the world, including in India, could try to build a product like ChatGPT or a company like OpenAI but would fail.

 

“It's totally impossible to rival us in training these core models, and we'll advise you not to even attempt it. But it's your responsibility to try anyway. I genuinely believe in both those aspects. I reckon it's quite a futile pursuit,” Altman had then said at an event.

 

Following backlash over his comments, Altman had later clarified that his comments had been taken out of context.

 

“this is really taken out of context! the question was about competing with us with $10 million, which i really do think is not going to work. but i still said try! however, i think it’s the wrong question,” Altman had said in a tweet.

 

In a second tweet, he had also said that he had “no doubt” that Indian startups could do what had never been done before and contribute a new thing to the world.