OpenAI's Southeast Asia Chief Puts Everyday Utility at the Center of AI Push

OpenAI's new head of business for Southeast Asia and Australia says the company should be judged by how useful its AI tools are in everyday life, not just by how powerful its models are.

Sandhya Devanathan, vice president and general manager for these two markets, shared her thoughts in a LinkedIn post about five weeks after starting the job. She explained how she wants the technology to reach individuals, businesses and universities. She is based in Singapore and leads OpenAI's business operations in both regions.

"One question I keep coming back to is how we help more people make AI useful in their own lives," she wrote in the post.

Devanathan gave some examples of what this could mean. A small business owner could use the tools to test a business idea or better understand how their company is doing. Someone returning to work could use them to learn a new skill and feel more confident. Universities could use them to help speed up research, she said.

These kinds of uses were among the reasons she decided to join OpenAI. She said that some of the most rewarding work in her career had involved helping businesses of different sizes grow, supporting partnerships between countries and seeing how these efforts created new opportunities for people.

Looking back at her first few weeks, Devanathan said she had been getting to know her colleagues, partners and customers. She said she was impressed by how curious the staff were, how quickly things moved and how much there was to learn.

She also pointed out that Southeast Asia and Australia are not one single market. People in these places have different experiences, speak different languages and have different needs. Devanathan said she plans to listen to teams, customers and partners, understand what matters to them and find where OpenAI can help the most.

She has spent much of her career working across the region and said she was happy to be building a business there again. She welcomed the chance to work with a technology that could give people and businesses more choices. She thanked Kiran Mani, Jason K., Sarah Friar, Oliver Jay and Dana Faucher for bringing her into the company, as well as her new colleagues for making her feel welcome.

The focus on making AI useful comes at a time when people are paying closer attention to the costs of running AI services. Giving a user one answer can require several rounds of computer processing behind the scenes. Each round uses computer chips and electricity in data centers. With subscriptions that charge a fixed price, customers pay the same amount within their usage limits, even if they ask for many changes. This means the company providing the service has to pay for the extra computing work.

This also means companies need computer hardware even after they finish building an AI model. They must keep enough computing power ready to answer users' requests and add more as demand grows. At the same time, they need separate equipment to train newer models. More powerful systems can also increase the amount of computing needed, even if the number of users stays the same. Once people trust the results, they often give AI more difficult tasks. OpenAI sells subscriptions and access to its tools through an API, rather than selling computer hardware. Because of this, it is important for the company to make its tools part of people's everyday work. When people use them regularly, the tools become a habit and their value is easier to explain.

For the region, the message from OpenAI's local leader is that the company will need to understand each market separately. Southeast Asia has many languages and different levels of digital development. Australia, meanwhile, has a more connected business environment. This means one approach is unlikely to work everywhere. Devanathan says her first priority is to understand these differences before expanding. This suggests that OpenAI plans to rely on local partnerships and support that meets local needs, rather than using the same approach across the whole region.

Devanathan did not share specific plans for products, prices or hiring in the region. OpenAI has not publicly shared how large its operations are in Southeast Asia or Australia.