As India embarks on an exciting artificial intelligence (AI) journey, OpenAI Co-founder and CEO Sam Altman said on Wednesday that India is a very important market for AI and the company’s second biggest market globally.

Altman, speaking at an event in the presence of Union Minister for Railways and Electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, emphasized the growing importance of India in the global AI landscape.

According to Altman, who recently announced a massive $500 billion project called ‘Stargate’ to build new AI infrastructure in the US with partners like SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX, India should take the lead in AI.

“India is a very important market for AI. It is our second biggest market. Models are still not cheap, but they are doable. India should be a leader there, of course,” he told the gathering.

He also clarified that his previous comment about India’s ability to make large language models (LLMs) had been “taken out of context.”

Minister Vaishnaw highlighted the country’s young entrepreneurs, noting their focus on innovation that could reduce costs and make India a global leader in AI, just as it succeeded in the Chandrayaan mission.

Last month, the Minister announced that India is likely to launch its own safe and secure indigenous AI model within six months at an affordable cost.

This Indian AI model aims to position the country as a technological powerhouse, providing ethical AI solutions. It will be backed by a high-end common computing facility as part of the IndiaAI mission, which is focusing on customizing AI solutions for the domestic context, including Indian languages.

Scientists, researchers, developers, and coders are working on multiple foundational models, and with the current pace, the Union Minister expressed confidence that the Indian AI model would be ready within six months.

The AI model will start with a computing facility of around 10,000 GPUs, with plans to add the remaining 8,693 GPUs. Initially, the facility will benefit researchers, students, and developers, with usage costs set at less than Rs 100 per GPU after a 40% subsidy.

In comparison, global models like ChatGPT cost $2.5 to $3 per hour, while India’s AI model will be available at a fraction of the price—less than Rs 100 per hour.

India’s AI model is expected to be about nine times the size of China’s open-source model DeepSeek and two-thirds the size of ChatGPT’s infrastructure.