OpenAI pushes into higher education as India seeks to scale AI skills

OpenAI is expanding its presence in India and deepening its engagement with the country’s higher education ecosystem through new partnerships with major academic institutions. The expansion comes as India works to rapidly grow AI capabilities and strengthen domestic know-how across one of the world’s biggest talent pipelines.

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced collaborations with six public and private higher-education institutions in India, spanning premier engineering, management, medical, and design-focused campuses. The company said the effort is designed to reach more than 100,000 students, faculty members, and staff over the next year.

Instead of targeting everyday consumer usage, the initiative is built around weaving AI into core academic operations, highlighting OpenAI’s interest in shaping how AI is taught, governed, and adopted within one of the largest higher-education systems on the planet.

OpenAI has already cultivated a massive consumer audience for ChatGPT in India. CEO Sam Altman has said the chatbot has over 100 million monthly active users in India, making it OpenAI’s second-largest user base after the United States. The timing also aligns with a wider push by leading AI companies to expand in India, which is hosting an AI Impact Summit in New Delhi this week.

The first group of partner institutions includes some of India’s most prominent academic institutions, such as the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences New Delhi, as well as private universities and specialised design schools. OpenAI said the work will cover a wide range of disciplines, from engineering and business to healthcare, design, and other creative fields.

India has become an increasingly important proving ground for AI adoption in education. Last month, Google said India leads the world in usage of its Gemini tools for learning. Microsoft, in a similar vein, said this week it would broaden its Elevate skilling initiative in India to train teachers across schools, vocational centres, and higher education institutions, working with government bodies as part of a larger national effort to scale AI skills.

OpenAI said its partnerships will include campus-wide availability of ChatGPT Edu, faculty enablement sessions, and responsible-use frameworks. The company emphasised that the goal is to embed AI into everyday academic workflows—such as coding, research, analytics, and case-based analysis—rather than simply providing access to standalone tools.

Two of the participating institutions, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and Manipal Academy of Higher Education, will also roll out OpenAI-supported certifications. In addition, OpenAI said it will collaborate with Indian ed-tech platforms, including Physics Wallah, upGrad, and HCL GUVI, to take AI training beyond university campuses. These platforms are set to introduce structured programs covering AI fundamentals and practical ChatGPT applications, targeting studentandas early-career professionals.

Raghav Gupta, OpenAI India’s head of education, said educational institutions are a “critical route” to narrowing the gap between rapidly evolving AI tools and how people actually apply them, as skill requirements shift across industries and roles across the economy.

Last year, OpenAI brought Gupta on board—previously a managing director for Coursera in Asia-Pacific—to lead education efforts in India and the broader Asia-Pacific region. That move came alongside the launch of a Learning Accelerator program to expand AI skills and improve access to structured learning pathways.

The rush into education highlights how AI firms are increasingly looking beyond consumer products and enterprise customers and toward institutions that shape skills, standards, and long-term adoption. For countries like India, the competition is not only about gaining access to AI tools, but also about who influences how those tools are taught, governed, and integrated at scale across society.