OpenAI is working with former Twitter India head Rishi Jaitly as a senior advisor to facilitate talks with the government about AI policy, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. OpenAI is also looking to set up a local team in India.
People familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that Jaitly has been helping OpenAI navigate the Indian policy and regulatory landscape.
OpenAI currently does not have an official presence in India (apart from a trademark, approved earlier this month). However, OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman visited New Delhi during his world tour in June and met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After his meeting, Altman said he had a great conversation with Modi. Nevertheless, neither Altman nor the company made any announcements during his two-day visit.
It’s not clear if Jaitly is formally employed at OpenAI, but he’s been taking on a role advising the company on how to establish connections in India. He started in the role sometime after Atlman’s New Delhi visit, two sources told TechCrunch.
Between 2007 and 2009, Jaitly served as head of the public-private partnership for Google in India before moving to Twitter (now called X) in 2012. He was the company’s first employee in the country, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He was later elevated to VP for the APAC and MENA region. In late 2016, Jaitly left Twitter and became the co-founder and CEO of Times Bridge, the global investment arm of the Indian media giant The Times Group. Times Bridge’s portfolio includes Uber, Airbnb, Coursera, Mubi, Smule, and Wattpad. Jaitly left the firm in 2022.
OpenAI and Jaitly did not respond to requests for comment.
OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, Anna Makanju, is scheduled to speak at the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence summit in Delhi next week, alongside other industry experts and international politicians. She will be a part of the session titled “Collaborative AI for Global Partnership (CAIGP) – Global Cooperation for Equitable AI.” Sources told TechCrunch that Jaitly assisted in setting up Makanju’s participation at the event.
At an event hosted by Times Group in New Delhi during his June visit, Altman responded to a question about building foundational models with a $10 million budget. It’s “hopeless,” he said. (OpenAI has raised a bit more itself — over $11 billion to date — to build its foundational models.
His comments met some backlash from Indian entrepreneurs, but Altman clarified later that his words were taken out of context and that he meant it’s hard to compete with the likes of OpenAI with such a budget.
“The right question is what a startup can do that’s never been done before, that will contribute a new thing to the world. I have no doubt Indian startups can and will do that,” he said in a post on X.
Critics have described India as severely lagging behind in the world of AI development, not least because of the lack of funding. This piece in September noted that India’s AI startups have raised around $4 billion, which sounds like a big number until you consider the $50 billion that has been poured into the ecosystem in India’s great rival, China; or the $11 billion+ that OpenAI alone has raised (along with the billions more picked up by other large players, and of course the money Big Tech is putting into this).
A more sympathetic view point might be that India’s AI development is still just nascent, with a few startups such as Sarvam — which recently raised $41 million from investors including Lightspeed, Peak XV, and Khosla Ventures — just getting started on building foundational models.}