OpenAI is rapidly expanding its presence in India — one of the key markets for its flagship ChatGPT product.

India is an appealing destination for U.S. tech giants, with companies ranging from Google to Meta betting on its huge — and young — population over recent years.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visited the country in February this year and met with the country’s IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to discuss collaboration. During the visit, Altman said India was OpenAI’s second-largest market by number of users.

He has subsequently said that AI adoption in India is “amazing to watch.”

“We love to see the explosion of creativity–india is outpacing the world,” he said on X earlier this year.

India is one of ChatGPT’s fastest-growing markets globally, Nick Patience, practice lead for AI at tech research and analysis firm Futurum Group, told CNBC. “OpenAI’s India focus is a strategic move to gain a competitive edge,” he added.

Here’s a rundown of how OpenAI is expanding in India.

To address this, OpenAI in August launched ChatGPT Go, a low-cost 399-rupees-($4.53)-a-month plan for its AI app.

“It’s a classic wedge strategy to capture a price-sensitive market and build a user base that will be difficult for local players to dislodge later,” Futurum Group’s Patience said of the strategy.

According to Bloomberg, OpenAI is scouting a location in India for a data center with at least 1-gigawatt capacity. The facility will be part of OpenAI’s Stargate-branded infrastructure push, Bloomberg said this week, although CNBC was unable to verify the report.

The ChatGPT developer said last month that it would open a local office in the market and is currently advertising three sales roles in India.

It also announced last month an education program in India that will include funding for research and provide half a million ChatGPT licenses for educators and students across the country.

Continued geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and India over trade, however, have the potential to cause complications if there’s any backlash from New Delhi against American tech firms.

OpenAI is also locked in a legal battle with Asian News International in India, which has accused the ChatGPT developer of using copyrighted material illegally. It’s a closely-watched case in the country for how copyright laws apply in the AI era.

“OpenAI’s success in India is not guaranteed and depends heavily on its ability to navigate these legal and political hurdles,” Futurum Group’s Patience said.

“While the Indian market is vast, its diversity in languages and user needs presents challenges. OpenAI’s ability to deliver a truly localized product and its long-term impact on India’s AI talent remain uncertain.”

Bret Taylor’s artificial intelligence startup Sierra has just joined an exclusive club: The company sports a new $10 billion valuation after raising $350 million in fresh capital.

Sierra is one of just a handful of AI startups, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machines that are valued at or above $10 billion.

Investors are pouring money into this competitive group of companies in the hopes that they’ll eventually hit the public markets.

Taylor is the chairman of OpenAI’s board, and previously served as co-CEO of Salesforce alongside Marc Benioff. Taylor co-founded Sierra in 2023. The company builds and implements AI agents for customer service. AI agents can carry out tasks autonomously on behalf of their users.

Shares of Salesforce fell 5% Thursday after the company reported weak guidance and concerns lingered about how AI is affecting software companies.

Sierra said its agents are already being used by “hundreds of millions of people” to help with tasks like refinancing homes, ordering lunch, delivering furniture, understanding insurance deductibles and fixing technology, among other things.

Greenoaks led Sierra’s latest funding round, the company said. Its valuation more than doubled from its most recent raise in October.

“We’re in this for the long term,” Sierra said in a blog post on Thursday.

The company said it will use its fresh funding to invest in its platform and focus on domestic and international expansion.

Sierra’s funding follows a flurry of other major AI raises in Silicon Valley. Earlier this week, Anthropic announced it had closed a $13 billion funding round at a $183 billion post-money valuation.

WATCH: Sierra co-founder Bret Taylor on AI agents’ role in an evolving global landscape

Broadcom is scheduled to report earnings for its fiscal third quarter after the close of regular trading on Thursday.

Here’s what analysts are expecting, according to a consensus from LSEG.

• Earnings per share: $1.65
• Revenue: $15.83 billion

Broadcom, which develops custom chips for Google and other huge cloud companies and also makes networking gear needed to tie thousands of artificial intelligence chips together, is expected to report revenue growth of 21% from $13.07 billion a year ago.

Analysts project revenue growth will hold steady the rest of this year and accelerate a bit in 2026.

Broadcom has been one of the chief beneficiaries of the AI boom thanks largely to its accelerator chips, which the company calls XPUs. The processors are generally simpler and less expensive to operate than Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, and they’re designed to run specific AI programs efficiently.

Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald wrote in a report last week that they expect to see increased signs of demand from Google and Meta.

“Additionally, all eyes will turn towards any visibility of current AI Custom Silicon engagements converting into customers with high-volume ramps in sight,” wrote the analysts, who recommend buying the stock.

The analysts estimate that custom silicon could generate $25 billion to $30 billion in revenue for Broadcom next year and more than $40 billion by around 2027. The company generated total revenue of $51.6 billion in the latest fiscal year.

Shares of Broadcom are up 30% this year and have almost doubled in the past 12 months, lifting the company’s market cap to $1.4 trillion.

In the fiscal second quarter, AI revenue jumped 46% from a year earlier to more than $4.4 billion, with 40% from networking. CEO Hock Tan said that number should reach $5.1 billion in the third quarter, “as our hyperscale partners continue to invest.”

Some of Broadcom’s expansion has been fueled by acquisitions, most notably the purchase of server virtualization software vendor VMware for $61 billion in 2023. VMware is key to Broadcom’s infrastructure software business, which accounted for 44% of sales in the most recent quarter.

WATCH: Nvidia has best percentage of revenue from AI