Sam Altman revealed last Sunday that 100 million active users in India use ChatGPT every week. This figure makes India OpenAI’s second-largest global market, after the United States.


At the time of the data release, Altman was preparing to attend the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. OpenAI only established an office in India in August 2025, but has grown rapidly. To cater to this price-sensitive market, they launched the ChatGPT Go plan with a monthly fee of less than $5, and even offered one year of free access.

Students are the main driver of growth. India has the world’s largest number of ChatGPT student users, which prompted Google to also offer its AI Pro plan for free to Indian students in September 2025. Google’s Vice President of Education, Chris Phillips, said last month that India ranks first globally in the adoption of Gemini for learning.

But user scale does not equal commercial success. India is price-sensitive and has infrastructure limitations, making monetization more complex than in developed markets. Altman warned that if access and adoption are uneven, the economic benefits of AI may be concentrated in the hands of a few.

The Indian government is attempting to address these issues through initiatives such as the IndiaAI Mission, which aims to expand computing power, support startups, and accelerate the application of AI in public services.

Altman stated that OpenAI plans to deepen its cooperation with the Indian government and will soon announce new partnerships to expand access to AI.

This week’s India AI Impact Summit attracted global tech leaders, including Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Sundar Pichai of Google, and several heads of state. This indicates that India is trying to position itself as a hub for global AI debates.

For OpenAI, 100 million users is a milestone, but the real test lies in how to translate user scale into sustainable commercial impact.