OpenAI now allows enterprises to process AI requests within India

“Some Indian businesses have not fully deployed AI for important work because they need the information involved to be processed within the country,” said Nitin Bawankule, Head of Enterprise, India, OpenAI. Photo credit: Linkedin OpenAI on Thursday (November 12, 2026) announced local processing and inference for its API in India, allowing eligible businesses and developers to have supported AI requests processed and model computations performed within the country.The move expands the company’s existing data residency offering in India, which was introduced in May 2025 and allowed eligible customers to store their data in the country. The latest development extends this capability to cover where the AI model processes information and generates responses, addressing a key concern among businesses handling sensitive information.Initially available for the GPT-6 Luna model, the new offering is aimed at organisations that have not fully deployed artificial intelligence in business operations because of requirements around where their information is processed. This is particularly relevant to customers in financial services with specific data localisation requirements, OpenAI said.“Some Indian businesses have not fully deployed AI for important work because they need the information involved to be processed within the country,” said Nitin Bawankule, Head of Enterprise - India, OpenAI.“Local inference gives them more control over where supported workloads run and helps address a practical barrier to adoption. It gives more businesses a way to put OpenAI’s tools to work, and gives Indian developers and startups more scope to build for their own, and enterprise needs.”Under the new arrangement, both the processing of an API request and the model computation that generates its response will take place in India for supported workloads. Supported customer content will also be stored in the country, the company said.The launch covers direct API usage and currently supports GPT-6 Luna input and output through the Responses and Chat Completions APIs. Customers can access the capability by creating a new API project, selecting India for both storage and processing, and using the corresponding India regional endpoint.The development comes as OpenAI expands its presence in India. Earlier this year, the company introduced OpenAI for India, an initiative spanning AI infrastructure, enterprise adoption, skills development and local partnerships. The initiative included a partnership with Tata Group to develop domestic AI data-centre capacity, according to OpenAI.OpenAI models were also made available for in-country inference through Amazon Web Services’ Bedrock platform. AWS announced the availability of OpenAI models on Bedrock in August 2026, including regional inference capabilities for supported models.OpenAI said its now launched API inference residency offering is available in other parts of the world, with India, Australia and Japan among the latest markets to receive the capability. Published - November 12, 2026 02:59 pm IST