Sandhya Devanathan is leaving Meta after more than a decade to take on a newly created regional leadership role at OpenAI, as the ChatGPT maker expands its commercial and operational presence across Southeast Asia and Australia.
Devanathan, Meta’s vice president and head of India and Southeast Asia, will become OpenAI’s vice president for Southeast Asia and Australia. She is expected to start in October 2026 and will be based in Singapore.
OpenAI Creates Regional Role
Devanathan will report to Kiran Mani, OpenAI’s managing director for Asia-Pacific. Her responsibilities will include consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement and operations, making the role broader than a conventional market-expansion mandate. She will also work on partnerships and wider adoption of OpenAI’s products among businesses, institutions and government bodies in the region.
The appointment comes as OpenAI builds out dedicated leadership across Asia-Pacific. The company has opened offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney and New Delhi over the past two years, according to current reporting.
Devanathan joined Meta in 2016 and spent more than a decade at the company, working across its ecommerce and gaming businesses in Asia-Pacific before taking charge of India and Southeast Asia. Her experience gives her exposure to both consumer technology and regional operations across several markets.
Southeast Asia’s Digital Scale
The market OpenAI is targeting is already one of the world’s largest digital growth stories. The Google, Temasek and Bain & Company e-Conomy SEA 2025 report projected Southeast Asia’s digital economy to surpass $300 billion in gross merchandise value in 2025, with revenue expected to reach $135 billion.
The region has more than 680 million people and added more than 200 million internet users over the past decade, according to the report. Its digital economy has expanded across ecommerce, online media, travel, food delivery and digital financial services, creating a large base of consumers and businesses for technology companies.
AI is becoming an increasingly important part of that market. More than 680 AI startups attracted over $2.3 billion in investment in the 12 months to June 2025. AI-related investment accounted for more than 30% of private funding value in Southeast Asia during the first half of 2025.
That gives OpenAI an ecosystem that extends beyond end users to startups, enterprises, investors and governments.
AI Investment Builds Momentum
The region’s AI opportunity is also translating into infrastructure investment. The e-Conomy SEA 2025 report identified more than 4,600 MW of planned new data-centre capacity in Southeast Asia as of the first half of 2025. It projected regional data-centre capacity to grow by 180%, compared with 120% for the rest of Asia-Pacific.
The figures do not represent OpenAI’s own infrastructure investment. Instead, they illustrate the broader expansion of computing capacity taking place as AI and cloud demand increases across the region.
Singapore is particularly important to that ecosystem. The e-Conomy report projected the city-state’s digital economy at $29 billion in GMV in 2025 and identified it as the leading regional AI hub, with $1.31 billion in private AI funding during the first half of 2025.
For OpenAI, having its Southeast Asia and Australia leadership based in Singapore places the new regional role in one of the region’s established technology and financial centres.
OpenAI Strengthens Asia Leadership
Devanathan’s appointment follows another senior leadership hire in the region. In June 2026, OpenAI appointed former Uber India and South Asia president Prabhjeet Singh as its managing director for India. Singh is due to join in September and will become the company’s most senior leader in India, with responsibility for consumer growth, enterprise adoption and partnerships.
The two appointments give OpenAI dedicated senior leadership for India and for Southeast Asia and Australia, while Kiran Mani oversees the wider Asia-Pacific region.
OpenAI has not disclosed financial targets associated with Devanathan’s appointment. Nor has it provided a regional revenue target for Southeast Asia and Australia. The stated remit, however, shows that the company is placing equal emphasis on consumer adoption, enterprise relationships, partnerships and regulatory engagement.
Competition Moves Beyond ChatGPT
The regional expansion comes as AI companies compete not only for users but also for enterprise customers, developers, infrastructure and government relationships.
Southeast Asia’s AI ecosystem is already attracting capital, while its data-centre pipeline is expanding. For OpenAI, the commercial opportunity therefore extends across multiple layers of the technology market.
Devanathan’s move from Meta to OpenAI puts an executive with a decade of experience in one of the world’s largest digital platforms into a role focused on building OpenAI’s presence across a diverse group of markets.
Her mandate will cover Australia alongside Southeast Asia, but the company has not publicly broken out market-specific targets for the region. The immediate focus, based on the responsibilities attached to the role, will be expanding adoption, developing partnerships and navigating regulatory and operational requirements across the markets under her remit.
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