OpenAI and the Tata Group officially announced a foundational strategic partnership at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. The center-piece of this deal is OpenAI becoming the anchor customer for TCS’s HyperVault data center business, securing an initial 100 megawatts (MW) of AI-ready compute capacity.
This move is a core component of the “OpenAI for India” initiative, designed to provide the local infrastructure necessary for “sovereign AI”—allowing OpenAI’s most advanced models to run within Indian borders to meet strict data residency and security requirements.
Infrastructure: From 100MW to 1GW
The partnership is structured as a multi-year roadmap to build one of the world’s largest AI-specific data center clusters.
- Initial Capacity: 100MW of high-density, liquid-cooled infrastructure powered by green energy.
- Scalability: The agreement includes a clear path to scale the facility to 1 gigawatt (1GW) as demand grows.
- HyperVault Integration: OpenAI is the first customer for TCS HyperVault, a specialized unit established in 2025 to provide “gigawatt-scale” infrastructure for hyperscalers and frontier AI labs.
- The “Stargate” Connection: This project is part of OpenAI’s global “Stargate” initiative, which aims to build $100 billion worth of AI-ready data centers worldwide.
Strategic Impact: Enterprise and Education
Beyond the “iron and silicon,” the partnership covers a broad range of enterprise and social objectives:
| Pillar | Focus Area |
| Enterprise ChatGPT | Several thousand Tata Group employees will receive access to ChatGPT Enterprise to boost internal productivity and innovation. |
| Agentic AI Solutions | OpenAI and TCS will co-develop industry-specific AI agents for sectors like retail, manufacturing, and financial services. |
| Software Engineering | TCS will integrate OpenAI’s Codex capabilities to standardize and accelerate its global software development processes. |
| Youth Skilling | The OpenAI Foundation and TCS will collaborate to train 1 million Indian youth in responsible AI usage and NGOs in building AI toolkits. |
Why This Matters for India
The deal addresses the primary bottleneck for AI in India: the lack of local, high-end compute.
- Latency & Compliance: By hosting models locally, OpenAI can offer lower latency for its 100 million+ weekly Indian users while complying with government mandates for data localization.
- Government Trust: The “sovereign” nature of the infrastructure makes it viable for mission-critical and government workloads, which previously faced hurdles due to data being processed in overseas cloud regions.
“Through OpenAI for India and our partnership with Tata Group, we’re working together to build the infrastructure, skills, and local partnerships needed to build AI with India, for India, and in India.” — Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI, Feb 19, 2026.
