OpenAI Launches Massive India Initiative with Tata Group for Sovereign AI Infrastructure

OpenAI officially introduced OpenAI for India today at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in Delhi. This nationwide initiative marks a significant commitment to the world's largest democracy through deep partnerships with leading Indian institutions. The strategy focuses on building sovereign AI capabilities, accelerating corporate adoption, and investing heavily in the local workforce.

A foundational agreement with the Tata Group serves as the centerpiece of this expansion. OpenAI will become the first major customer of Tata Consultancy Services’ HyperVault data center business. The project begins with 100 megawatts of capacity and has a clear roadmap to scale to 1 gigawatt over time. This local infrastructure ensures that mission-critical data remains within Indian borders while providing lower latency for domestic users.

The partnership extends into the enterprise sector with one of the largest AI deployments to date. Tata Group plans to roll out ChatGPT Enterprise to hundreds of thousands of employees, including the global workforce at TCS. Developers across the organization will also use OpenAI’s Codex to standardize software development. This collaboration positions Tata as a primary driver of AI-native transformation at a global scale.

Education and upskilling are central to the mission of empowering the next generation of Indian tech talent. OpenAI is distributing more than 100,000 ChatGPT Edu licenses to students at premier institutions like IIM Ahmedabad and AIIMS New Delhi. Furthermore, TCS will be the first organization outside the United States to offer OpenAI Certifications. These programs aim to provide professionals with practical skills that are relevant to the modern AI-driven economy.

India already boasts over 100 million weekly active users on ChatGPT, showcasing a massive appetite for the technology. To support this growth, OpenAI plans to open new offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru later this year. These hubs will complement the existing New Delhi presence and facilitate closer collaboration with local startups and government agencies as seen on the OpenAI news page.

Consumer innovation is also a priority, highlighted by a new integration with JioHotstar. This partnership introduces multilingual cognitive search, allowing users to discover content using conversational voice prompts in various Indian languages. By merging the JioHotstar catalog with ChatGPT, the two companies are redefining how millions of people interact with digital entertainment.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, noted that India is well placed to help shape the future of how democratic AI is adopted. He emphasized that the initiative is designed to build AI with India and for India. Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran added that this collaboration marks a major milestone in India’s vision to become a global leader in the field.