OpenAI just poached one of Meta’s most senior leaders in Asia. Sandhya Devanathan, Meta’s vice president for India and Southeast Asia, is leaving the social media giant to join the ChatGPT maker, according to TechCrunch AI. She’ll be based in Singapore and report to OpenAI’s Asia-Pacific managing director, Kiran Mani.
This is a notable hire, and the timing tells you a lot about where the AI race is heading next.
What happened
Devanathan spent more than a decade at Meta, joining in 2016 and climbing through several leadership roles, including running its Asia Pacific gaming business. She was appointed VP for India and Southeast Asia in June of last year. TechCrunch AI reports that at OpenAI she’ll oversee consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement, and operations across Southeast Asia and Australia.
Her move doesn’t stand alone. It lands just days after Prabhjeet Singh joined OpenAI as its India head. Singh spent more than ten years at Uber leading its India and South Asia business. Two senior regional hires in one week is not a coincidence. It’s a hiring sprint.
Why it matters
What stands out here is the deliberate build-out. Over the past two years, OpenAI has opened offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, and Delhi. Now it’s stacking those offices with executives who already know how to grow consumer products and manage regulators in the region’s toughest markets.
That regulatory experience is the tell. India is one of the largest and most complex markets on the planet for any tech company, and OpenAI is hiring people who’ve lived through its rules, its politics, and its scrutiny. Devanathan was involved in Meta’s decision-making process in the country, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch AI. OpenAI isn’t just buying growth talent. It’s buying local knowledge.
Here’s the competitive picture:
- Talent flow is reversing. For years, the top operators sat at Meta, Google, and Uber. Now they’re moving to the AI-native firms.
- Asia Pacific is the new battleground. OpenAI wants ChatGPT and its enterprise tools embedded across the region before rivals lock in.
- Regulatory savvy is a hire, not an afterthought. OpenAI is staffing for scrutiny before it fully arrives.
The Meta backdrop
Devanathan is walking out during a rough stretch for Meta in India. The company has faced growing pressure from Indian authorities in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Meta apologized after Instagram mistakenly restricted a post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July. New Delhi summoned Meta executives, including chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan, over the incident.
The scrutiny goes deeper than one post. Indian authorities have raised concerns about child sexual abuse material on Meta’s platforms. Last month, the government sought an explanation after a BBC report found Instagram ads that allegedly offered access to such content. Meta said it removed the violating ads and accounts, rejected claims that it knowingly targeted those ads, and noted it had pulled 160,000 accounts in India over six months based on signals of child-exploitative activity.
With Devanathan gone, Meta’s India managing director, Arun Srinivas, will report directly to Benjamin Joe, the company’s VP for Asia Pacific, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch AI.
What to watch next
Expect OpenAI to move fast in India. With a dedicated country head and a regional VP now in place, the company has the leadership to push ChatGPT adoption, chase enterprise deals, and open lines with regulators well ahead of any formal pressure. Meta, meanwhile, has to backfill senior leadership in a critical region at the exact moment officials are watching most closely.
The broader signal for AI practitioners: the platform giants no longer have a lock on the best operators, and the next phase of the AI race will be won market by market, not just model by model. If you’re building or deploying in Asia, the ground is shifting under your feet.
More detail on the moves and the India scrutiny is available at the original TechCrunch AI report.