India to overtake US and be No. 1 ChatGPT market soon, says OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
At the ChatGPT-5 launch event, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman highlighted the growing importance of the Indian market.
OpenAI has launched GPT-5, the latest version of its AI model, now available to both free and paid ChatGPT users, as well as developers through the API. The company said GPT-5 brings improvements in reasoning, speed, accuracy and maths capability.
At the launch event, CEO Sam Altman highlighted the growing importance of the Indian market. “India is our second-largest market in the world after the US, and it may well become our largest,” he said. “What users are doing with AI in India is quite remarkable.”
Altman added that OpenAI is working with local partners to improve affordability and accessibility of AI in India. He also confirmed plans to visit the country in September.
OpenAI said GPT-5 is its most capable model for coding and agentic tasks. It is available in three sizes: GPT-5, GPT-5-mini and GPT-5-nano, allowing developers to choose between performance and cost. In the API, GPT-5 is the reasoning model, while a lighter, non-reasoning variant called GPT-5-chat-latest is also available.
Altman said GPT-5 marks a significant advance from GPT-4, particularly in expert-level responses. “This is the first time one of our mainline models feels like talking to a PhD-level expert,” he said. “We wanted to make it available in our free tier for the first time.”
ChatGPT Team users can already access GPT-5, with Enterprise and Edu customers receiving it next week. GPT-5 Pro, which offers extended reasoning, will also be rolled out to these customers shortly.
ChatGPT Plus subscribers (~Rs. 1,660/month) receive higher usage limits for GPT-5, while Pro-tier users (~Rs. 16,600/month) get unlimited access and the enhanced GPT-5 Pro model with more reliable and detailed responses.
