Roti, Kapda, aur ChatGPT

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confessed, “I’d kind of forgotten how to function without it,” as a recent ChatGPT downtime left millions, from students to CEOs, grappling with disrupted workflows. For a tool boasting over 300 million weekly active users and processing a billion messages daily, this wasn’t just a technical hiccup—but a global wake-up call.

Businesses heavily reliant on ChatGPT, from startups like Engage AI to Fortune 500 giants like Coca-Cola and JPMorgan Chase, faced productivity slumps, delayed services, and potential revenue losses. To many professionals, the downtime felt like losing a trusted colleague mid-project. 

While OpenAI attributed the outage to a telemetry service misstep overwhelming its server management systems, it revealed a stark truth: no tech, no matter how robust, is immune to failure.        

This incident also highlighted the need for diversification. Tech leaders like Puneet Jindal of Labeller echoed the importance of a “Plan B”—leveraging alternatives like Claude or Gemini and building layered strategies to mitigate single points of failure. Shivani Rai Gupta of Jio aptly noted: “History has shown that no system is immune to downtime.”

The reliance on AI is only set to grow as ChatGPT aims to quadruple its user base within a year. This outage serves as a critical reminder to future-proof our AI ecosystems with resilience and flexibility. 

What’s your backup plan for the next digital hiccup? Explore more about the outage and its lessons here.

ChatGPT Calling…

“What’s the number again?” interrupted OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil a little over six times on the tenth day of ‘12 Days of OpenAI’.

ChatGPT is now available on WhatsApp and through phone calls, marking a leap toward making AI universally accessible. US users can call toll-free at 1-800-CHAT-GPT, while global users can connect via WhatsApp with a simple QR code. This rollout is a testament to OpenAI’s mission to reduce barriers and integrate AI seamlessly into our daily lives. “It’s about making AI useful for everyone,” said Weil. Impressively, ChatGPT even works on rotary phones, showcasing its adaptability. By expanding its reach, OpenAI is not just simplifying AI interaction but also challenging Meta’s dominance on WhatsApp. 

Curious about what’s next in AI? Find out more here.

What it Means for India 

Pragya Misra, OpenAI’s first and only employee in India—previously WhatsApp’s first hire in the country—shared in an exclusive interaction with AIM that India, with 900 million mobile phones and 700 million smartphones, is poised to drive OpenAI’s mission of AI-led accessibility and innovation into the future.

OpenAI’s strides in cost reduction, including cheaper tokenisers for Indic languages, are tailored to India’s price-sensitive market, underscoring its focus on inclusivity. “If you can solve for India, you can solve for the world,” she said, emphasising the nation’s diversity as both a challenge and a gateway to global impact.

Cockroach in Namma Bengaluru

Bengaluru is at the heart of Cockroach Labs’ operations in the Asia-Pacific region, driving innovation and growth for the cloud-native database pioneer. With a team of over 55 engineers specialising in database and cloud engineering, the city offers the perfect blend of technical talent and entrepreneurial spirit. 

“India’s unmatched technical talent and entrepreneurial mindset make Bengaluru a perfect fit for our mission,” said Spencer Kimball, co-founder and CEO, in an exclusive interview with AIM.         

Cockroach Labs is expanding its Bengaluru office into a first-class R&D hub, tackling challenges like vector data integration for AI-powered real-time intelligence. “India’s environment is perfect for not only engineering excellence but also go-to-market strategies tailored for enterprises,” Kimball added. 

Dive deeper into the full story here.