The offer coincides with the company’s first developer conference in India, DevDay Exchange Bengaluru, where local partnerships and initiatives are expected to be announced.

This development is part of OpenAI’s goal to expand in one of its fastest-growing markets, as India plays a very important role in the company’s global strategy. 

The offer comes in the midst of stiff competition from competitors like Google and Perplexity, both of which have recently launched similar promotions aimed at capturing India’s massive AI-curious population.

ChatGPT Go, which was introduced in India in August, is OpenAI’s most affordable paid tier, priced at under $5 a month. It offers 10 times more usage than the free version, allowing users to generate longer responses, create images, and upload files. The plan also includes improved memory, enabling more personalised interactions over time.

Nick Turley, OpenAI’s vice president and head of ChatGPT, said the company has been impressed by user engagement since launching the plan. “Since initially launching ChatGPT Go in India a few months ago, the adoption and creativity we’ve seen from our users has been inspiring,” Turley said. “We’re excited to see the amazing things our users will build, learn, and achieve with these tools.”

India, home to more than 700 million smartphone users and over a billion internet subscribers, has become an essential market for AI adoption. OpenAI opened its New Delhi office in August and is actively hiring to build a local team focused on growth and localisation.

However, while engagement is high, monetisation remains a challenge. According to Appfigures data, ChatGPT recorded about 29 million downloads in the 90 days leading up to August but generated only $3.6 million in in-app purchases during that period. 

The new free offer could help OpenAI enhance user loyalty and drive long-term adoption among students, developers, and small businesses, the demographic groups most likely to benefit from the expanded access.

The timing of the promotion also reveals OpenAI’s response to increased competition in the region. Perplexity recently partnered with Airtel to offer 360 million subscribers free access to Perplexity Pro, while Google has rolled out a complimentary one-year AI Pro plan for Indian students.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Go sits strategically between its free plan and premium Plus tier, offering features such as GPT-5 access, higher message limits, and daily image generation. 

With India being one of its top two markets, behind only the United States, this initiative could help the company balance user growth with sustainable revenue.

The company, launched in 2022, has now pulled in a total of $1.5 billion in funding. Details of who backed this latest round remain undisclosed. Previous rounds have seen investors like Accel step in, with July’s $100 million injection reported as part of an extension of an earlier $500 million round.

Growth has been rapid. According to sources, Perplexity’s annual recurring revenue is now approaching $200 million, up from $150 million just last month. That pace shows growing enterprise adoption and also the swelling user base, 30 million active users generating about 780 million queries each month.

The company’s vision extends well beyond being “another search engine.” Perplexity has repeatedly cast itself as a direct challenger to Google, offering conversational, citation-backed answers rather than the long list of links users typically see. 

In August, it went as far as making a $34.5 billion bid to acquire Google’s Chrome browser. The move followed U.S. Justice Department pressure on Google to divest Chrome over antitrust concerns. A federal judge later ruled Google would not be forced to sell, effectively ending the chance of that deal.

Beyond high-profile bids, Perplexity is working to expand its ecosystem. Its new Chromium-based browser, Comet, is currently available to Perplexity Max subscribers. The browser integrates search with task automation and multitasking tools, noting the company’s intention to play not only in search but also in productivity and workflow automation.

On the competition side, Google is continually refining its Search Generative Experience, OpenAI is reportedly preparing its own browser, and Anthropic is pushing its Claude-powered tools. However, Perplexity’s pitch, real-time answers with citations, has carved a unique position that is drawing attention from both publishers and enterprises.

The company has not issued a statement on the latest funding, but it is moving quickly, driven by capital, adoption, and a goal to unsettle one of the most entrenched tech monopolies of the modern era.

In a letter addressed to Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, the BBC accused the company of scraping its online material without consent and warned of possible legal consequences if its demands were not met.

Specifically, the BBC is asking for the deletion of all copies of its content used for training purposes, an end to the practice, and a proposal for financial compensation. Failure to comply, it says, could lead to an injunction.

This escalation places Perplexity at the centre of a deepening rift between traditional media outlets and tech companies leveraging journalistic content to power artificial intelligence systems.

“The BBC’s letter outlines a potential injunction unless Perplexity halts its content scraping activities, purges existing data from its models, and presents a proposal for financial compensation,” reported Financial Times, which had access to the communication.

Perplexity’s reaction was quick as it said in a statement also quoted by FT, “The BBC’s claims are manipulative and opportunistic,” adding that the broadcaster “has a fundamental misunderstanding of technology, the internet and intellectual property law.”

This isn’t the first time Perplexity has drawn the ire of publishers. In October 2024, The New York Times served the company with a cease-and-desist notice over similar allegations. The paper demanded a full stop to the use of its articles in AI training and sought answers on how Perplexity bypassed anti-scraping mechanisms.

Other major publishers such as Forbes, Wired, and Axel Springer have had similar complaints. While Perplexity insists it is indexing publicly accessible content rather than scraping it for training, companies are not convinced.

To manage the case, Perplexity launched a Publishers Program in mid-2024, offering revenue-sharing arrangements to selected media outlets.

Among the early participants are TIME, Der Spiegel, The Texas Tribune, and Fortune. These partners receive a share of ad revenue whenever their content appears in responses generated by the platform.

We don’t know yet if the BBC was ever approached to join the scheme—or declined.

The broadcaster’s demand is a defensive legal move which stresses the need for a transparent and enforceable licensing structure for how AI firms use journalistic content.

Perplexity, which is backed by high-profile investors including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, continues to defend its operations. The company maintains it is not infringing on intellectual property rights and blames the issue on misinterpretations of how its system works.

Srinivas took to Reddit to refute claims that Perplexity is cutting costs due to financial troubles. A user had suggested the company was in poor shape, pointing to recent changes like the Auto mode, which automatically selects a response model instead of letting users stick to their choice. 

The theory was that this was a cost-saving move, with Perplexity allegedly scaling back access to higher-end models.

Perplexity CEO, however, dismissed this idea. He explained that Auto mode wasn’t introduced to cut costs but to improve usability. “All AI products right now are shipping non-stop and adding a ton of buttons and dropdown menus and clutter,” he wrote. “The user shouldn’t have to learn so much to use a product.”

Srinivas acknowledged that rapid updates and new features, including Answer mode, have caused issues. Bugs, usability concerns, and a lack of transparency have frustrated some users. He admitted these problems and apologised, saying the company is working on improving internal processes.

On the financial front, he was clear: “We have all the funding we’ve raised, and our revenue is only growing.” As for a public listing, he made it clear that Perplexity is in no rush. “We have no plans of IPOing before 2028,” he stated.

The device, which will be priced under $1,000, is set for release in the second half of the year, with sales expected to begin in 2026.

Claudia Nemat, DT’s board member in charge of technology and innovation, emphasised that while the company is not building large language models, it is focusing on AI agents. “We are becoming an AI company,” she stated during a press conference at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

Perplexity, known for its AI-powered search engine, will be a huge part of the phone’s AI features. The company’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, explained its approach: “Perplexity is transitioning from just being an answer machine to an action machine. It is going to start doing things for you, not just answering questions. It’s going to be able to book flights for you, book reservations for you, send emails for you, send messages, place phone calls for you, and all those sorts of things, like set smart reminders.”

Although specific details about the device’s hardware and operating system remain undisclosed, Nemat noted that the phone would incorporate AI features directly into its core functionality, including lock screen interactions. It will also integrate services from Google Cloud AI, ElevenLabs, and Picsart.

T-Mobile’s AI assistant, Magenta AI, will be available as an app for Android and iOS users, but only for existing T-Mobile customers. 

This launch aligns with telecom companies’ focus on regaining influence in the smartphone sector, which has long been filled up by manufacturers and software giants like Apple and Google.

Perplexity’s involvement in the project comes as it seeks to differentiate itself in the competitive AI space, where companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google continue to push boundaries. “These are the kinds of things that earlier you would have to do in your own way, learning how to use these different apps,” Srinivas noted. 

“All these things are going to start becoming easier so that you can focus your time and energy on problem-solving.”

Telecom providers are looking to leverage new technology to strengthen their market position and T-Mobile seeks to disrupt the smartphone market.

The majority of the funding will come from external investors, but Perplexity itself will also contribute, using some of the capital it previously raised for its own expansion.

The fund will be managed by Kelly Graziadei and Joanna Lee Shevelenko, who previously co-founded the venture firm F7 Ventures. It’s still unknown if they will continue their involvement with F7 or shift their full focus to Perplexity’s investment initiative.

This comes shortly after Perplexity secured $500 million in funding last December, tripling its valuation to $9 billion. The investment round included backing from SoftBank, Nvidia, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Perplexity is not the only AI company with a dedicated investment fund. OpenAI also runs the OpenAI Startup Fund but has stated that it does not invest its own money, unlike Perplexity.

Added to its investment, Perplexity has been expanding its product lineup. The AI search engine developer recently introduced ‘Deep Research,’ a feature for generating in-depth AI-driven reports, and is developing a web browser named Comet, for which users can now join a waitlist.

The AI sector is attracting high venture capital. A report from HSBC Innovation Banking revealed that 42% of all U.S. venture capital investments in 2024 went into AI startups, compared to 36% in 2023 and 22% in 2022.

“Venture capital has always gravitated toward transformative industries, but the level of consolidation we’re seeing within one category is unprecedented,” said Dave Sabow, gead of HSBC U.S. Innovation Banking. 

“The radical change this investment will fuel places us in the dawn of ‘The Agentic Age,’ an era where autonomous artificial intelligence capabilities fundamentally redefine how we communicate, work and interface with digital and physical worlds.”

In recent months, AI and robotics startups have been raising funds. Figure, a company developing humanoid robots, is reportedly in talks to secure $1.5 billion in Series C funding.

Lambda, a cloud AI firm, has raised $480 million, while Together.ai, which focuses on open-source AI models, has secured $305 million in Series B funding.

Companies are seeking to capitalise on investment opportunities in artificial intelligence, particularly following OpenAI’s recent $6.6 billion fundraising success and Perplexity is not laying back.

The AI company launched in 2022 and has grown fast, attracting attention for its AI-powered search platform. Perplexity currently handles 15 million daily queries and generates an estimated $50 million in annual revenue. 

However, it has faced some issues from publishers, including The New York Times, for allegedly using content without proper authorisation. A few days ago, The New York Times sent a cease-and-desist letter, accusing the firm of copyright infringement. 

However, these challenges are not holding the company back. CEO Aravind Srinivas has maintained that Perplexity seeks collaboration with publishers, aiming to resolve concerns amicably.

Perplexity’s rise has attracted major investors, including SoftBank, Nvidia, and Jeff Bezos, who contributed to its previous funding rounds. Earlier this year, the company’s valuation reached $3 billion, and its current fundraising efforts, if successful, could more than double that figure. 

Perplexity’s innovative approach to search, which blends AI with natural language processing, has drawn interest from both users and also from individuals bothered about its methods of data collection and content usage.

Despite the controversies, Perplexity continues to push forward with product innovations. It recently introduced a feature that allows users to create custom web pages using AI-generated content. 

The company’s enterprise product has also been gaining traction, offering more tailored solutions for business users. However, issues about data privacy and intellectual property remain central issues as the firm looks to solidify its position in the AI-driven search market.