OpenAI hires Meta executive to lead Southeast Asia and Australia

OpenAI has hired Sandhya Devanathan, a senior executive from Meta, to lead its operations in Southeast Asia and Australia in a newly created role, as the artificial intelligence company accelerates its expansion across the high-growth Asia-Pacific region. Devanathan, who most recently served as Meta's Vice President for India and Southeast Asia, will begin in October and will be based in Singapore. In her new position, Devanathan will be OpenAI's senior-most leader in the region. Her responsibilities will include overseeing consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, operations, and engagement with regulators across markets that are collectively home to more than 600 million people. She will report to Kiran Mani, who was appointed OpenAI's Managing Director for Asia-Pacific in March. The hire underscores OpenAI's strategic focus on populous Asian markets where its ChatGPT service is seeing rapid adoption. According to the company, Indonesia and the Philippines are two of its top ten global markets by ChatGPT users. OpenAI has been building its regional leadership bench, also bringing on Prabhjeet Singh from Uber in June to lead its India business.