1. Headline & intro
India didn’t just adopt ChatGPT – it has quietly become OpenAI’s growth engine. With 100 million people using ChatGPT every week, mostly young and price‑sensitive users, India is turning into the place where consumer AI at scale is being tested for the rest of the world. That shift matters far beyond New Delhi: it will influence how AI products are priced, which languages get priority, how education is reshaped – and who ultimately holds power in the next phase of the AI race. This piece looks at what Altman’s India numbers really signal for OpenAI, rivals, and regulators.
2. The news in brief
According to TechCrunch, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that India now has 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users, making it the company’s second‑largest user base after the United States. Altman disclosed the figure in an article for The Times of India ahead of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, a five‑day government‑hosted event bringing together executives from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and global political leaders.
TechCrunch reports that ChatGPT overall had around 800 million weekly active users as of October 2025, and is now nearing 900 million, putting India at well over 10% of global weekly usage. OpenAI opened a New Delhi office in August 2025 and has tailored its offer for India with a sub‑$5 “ChatGPT Go” tier, which was later made free for a year for Indian users. Altman also highlighted that students are the largest user segment in India and hinted at upcoming OpenAI partnerships with the Indian government to expand AI access.
3. Why this matters
100 million weekly users is not just a vanity metric; it effectively makes India OpenAI’s primary non‑US test market for consumer AI. When a single country contributes more than a tenth of your global weekly usage, product decisions start to tilt toward that market’s realities: low ARPU, patchy connectivity, mobile‑first habits, and heavy use in education.
Who benefits?
- OpenAI gains scale, data, and political leverage. When Altman walks into an AI summit, he can credibly argue that OpenAI is a core part of India’s digital infrastructure already.
- Indian students and knowledge workers get a world‑class tool at ultra‑low or zero cost, turning ChatGPT into an informal extension of the country’s education and IT training system.
- Big Tech platforms (cloud, app stores, payment providers) benefit indirectly from the compute and distribution needed to serve those users.
Who loses?
- Local AI startups suddenly have to compete with a heavily discounted or free global product. Competing on model quality alone becomes nearly impossible; they are pushed toward niche verticals, language specialisation, or B2B services.
- Rivals like Anthropic or smaller US labs risk being locked out of the fastest‑growing mass market if they cannot match OpenAI’s pricing and localisation.
The immediate implication: AI’s center of gravity is shifting toward the Global South in usage, while ownership remains in the US. That imbalance will fuel future policy clashes over data, pricing power, and digital sovereignty.
4. The bigger picture
The India milestone sits at the intersection of three visible trends.
1. AI as a mass‑market utility
ChatGPT nearing 900 million weekly active users – as cited by TechCrunch – already puts it in the league of global consumer platforms, not niche productivity tools. India’s 100 million weekly users are the clearest evidence that generative AI has jumped from “Silicon Valley toy” to “everyday infrastructure” in emerging markets.
We have seen this movie before: Android smartphones, WhatsApp and later UPI payments all scaled explosively in India, forcing global players to optimise for low‑cost hardware, data‑saving modes, and vernacular languages. Those India‑first product decisions later shaped experiences in other developing regions.
2. Education as the beachhead
Altman underscores that students are the dominant Indian user group, while TechCrunch notes that Google responded with a free one‑year AI Pro plan for Indian students and that India is the top global market for using Gemini for learning. Education is becoming the primary on‑ramp for AI platforms: hook students early, cultivate habits, then convert a fraction into paying professionals and enterprises.
This is eerily similar to how G Suite and Office 365 colonised universities before conquering workplaces. The difference is that the AI layer can now shape how people think, write, and solve problems – not just where they store files.
3. State‑backed AI industrial policy
India’s IndiaAI Mission, mentioned by TechCrunch, aims to boost compute, startups and public‑sector AI. Combined with massive consumer adoption, this looks less like passive “market uptake” and more like an AI industrial strategy: make India indispensable both as a demand hub and as a partner for global firms seeking legitimacy outside the West.
For competitors, the message is clear: if you want to matter in AI globally, you now need an India strategy as much as a US one.
5. The European / regional angle
From a European perspective, India’s 100‑million milestone is both a warning and an opportunity.
On one hand, the EU is poised to become the world’s AI regulator through the AI Act, while India is quietly becoming one of AI’s largest consumer and experimentation labs. Europe risks replaying a familiar pattern: we set the rules, others build the products at global scale.
Indian usage will increasingly shape the defaults for global AI systems – languages prioritised, cultural references embedded, devices optimised for – in ways that may not align with European norms on privacy, labour, or education.
On the other hand, there is a strong complementarity:
- The EU brings regulatory know‑how, privacy standards (GDPR), and safety frameworks.
- India brings scale, a young population, and a hyper‑competitive cost environment that stress‑tests AI tools in real‑world conditions.
For European startups and research labs, India’s explosion in AI usage is a chance to co‑develop “democratic AI” standards that counterbalance US‑only perspectives. Joint projects around open models, multilingual support (including Indic and smaller European languages), and public‑sector AI would make far more sense than Europe trying to match India on scale alone.
But there is also a hard question: if ChatGPT and Gemini become the de facto learning tools for tens of millions of Indian students, whose epistemology and values are encoded in those systems – and where does Europe fit into that conversation?
6. Looking ahead
Several trajectories look likely over the next 12–24 months.
India‑first product design
Expect more India‑specific tiers, offline‑friendly features, and deeper support for Indian languages and exam prep. If those features work, they will be exported to Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America – turning India into a template for AI in the Global South.Government partnerships as the next battleground
Altman has already signalled upcoming partnerships with the Indian government. Watch closely where they land: education, healthcare, agriculture, or citizen‑service chatbots. Whoever secures flagship deployments in Indian public services gains not just revenue, but powerful proof points for other emerging markets.Rising pressure for local control
As AI seeps into classrooms and offices, Indian policymakers will face demands for data localisation, transparency over training data, and safeguards against bias in competitive exams and hiring. If OpenAI and others do not move proactively, they may run into a future wall of restrictions similar to what Big Tech faced in other jurisdictions.Competitive response from rivals
Google cannot afford to let OpenAI own the Indian narrative. Its early move with free Gemini plans for students is likely just the start; expect more deep integration into Android, YouTube, and education platforms tailored to India.
The open question is whether India uses this moment to build its own large‑scale models and infrastructure, or whether it remains primarily a distribution market for US‑built AI.
7. The bottom line
India crossing 100 million weekly ChatGPT users marks a pivot in the global AI story: scale is no longer a purely Western phenomenon. OpenAI now develops in a world where a single emerging market can make or break product strategies. For Europe and other regions, the challenge is to avoid becoming mere spectators while India and the US shape the norms of “democratic AI.” The real question is not who uses AI first, but who gets to define what responsible, inclusive AI looks like at planet scale.
