OpenAI, looking to break into the market in India, has reached out to a Virginia Tech professor with plenty of experience there.
Rishi Jaitly, who once led Twitter in India, is working with OpenAI to navigate the country’s policy and regulations.
Jaitly, 40, said Thursday that he is not leaving Virginia Tech, where he leads his brainchild, the university’s Institute for Leadership in Technology.
“[M]ulti-tasking while at VT,” he wrote in a message exchange. He has not answered further queries.
Jaitly, a New York City native, was communications director and speechwriter for former Google CEO (and one-time Blacksburg resident) Eric Schmidt, then helped pioneer Google’s and YouTube’s moves into South Asia. He would return to India in 2012, in a similar role for Twitter.
He left Twitter (now called X) in 2016 to found Times Bridge, an international investment and partnership firm centered in India. Jaitly came to Blacksburg in summer 2022, joining the Center for Humanities and the Academy of Transdisciplinary Studies.
Techcrunch.com, which broke the story, reported that aside from a recently approved trademark in India, OpenAI does not have an official presence there. The ChatGPT developer’s co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman, visited New Delhi in June, during a world tour, and met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Jaitly joined forces with Altman sometime after the New Delhi visit, according to TechCrunch.
Since then, Altman and OpenAI have experienced a bit of drama. The ChatGPT developer’s board ousted and then reinstated Altman during a three-day period in late November. While the board wasn’t clear on what led it to fire him, his rehiring came shortly after company employees threatened to leave en masse if he did not return.
