OpenAI Launches Data Center Operations in India for Local Data Hosting

The data of Indian ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and OpenAI API (application programming interface) Platform users will now be stored locally in the country to assist companies using these products in meeting local data sovereignty requirements when using OpenAI products in their businesses and developing new AI solutions, the company announced on Thursday.

ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu users in India will have their conversations with ChatGPT and custom GPTs in their respective Enterprise or Edu workspaces, including user prompts, uploaded files, and content across text, vision, and image modalities, stored in India.

ChatGPT API Platform customers who meet the eligibility requirements can enable data residency by creating a new project in the API Platform dashboard and selecting the appropriate country. "Currently, data storage for the API Platform will be stored in the selected region," according to OpenAI.

In February, Business Standard reported that OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, had begun the process of establishing data center operations in India to support the growing number of users and burgeoning load of extensive use cases for its artificial intelligence tools.

India has grown to be OpenAI's second-largest market, with the number of users expected to triple by 2024, according to the company's CEO Sam Altman, who visited the country in February.

"Seeing what people are building in India with AI at all levels of stack, chips, models, and all of the incredible applications, I believe India should be doing everything." "It is truly amazing to see what the country has accomplished and how it has embraced technology," Altman said during his visit to India on February 5.

Following Altman's visit, OpenAI executives held two separate meetings that week: one with government officials from the Prime Minister's Office, the US Embassy in India, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Home Affairs, and another with technology policy advocacy groups organized by TQH (The Quantum Hub).

Both of these closed-door meetings saw OpenAI executives, including vice-president of engineering Srinivas Narayanan, explain the company's products and offerings, as well as the importance of the country in its overall plans, sources told BS.

In addition to India, OpenAI announced on Thursday a data residency program for ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and API Platform users in Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. The company had previously announced similar data residency programmes in Europe.

"Data residency builds on OpenAI's robust data privacy, security, and compliance features, which support hundreds of organisations partnering with OpenAI across Asia today—from start-ups and large enterprises to academic institutions—including Kakao, SoftBank, Grab, Singapore Airlines, and many more," the organization wrote on its blog.