HCLTech’s OpenAI Deal Breaks New Ground for Indian IT
As Indian IT enters FY26, Indian IT giants have been announcing work on hundreds of AI agents and drug discovery. TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and Tech Mahindra have all been partnering with AI startups for the past two years, but this time HCLTech seems to have hit the bullseye. HCLTech has announced a partnership with OpenAI in a multi-year strategic deal to drive enterprise AI. It’s a one-of-a-kind deal in India’s IT landscape, marking a direct partnership with OpenAI. Though firms, including HCLTech, have partnered with startups like Sarvam and Yellow.ai, as well as those from the West, this OpenAI deal has several angles to it. While most IT firms are still accessing OpenAI’s models via Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, HCLTech’s direct collaboration gives it privileged access to the ChatGPT maker’s AI portfolio, positioning it uniquely at the frontlines of enterprise AI adoption. But this is where the turning point lies. Breaking Away From the Hyperscaler Herd OpenAI’s models will now be embedded deep into HCLTech’s AI stack, including AI Force, AI Foundry, and domain-specific accelerators. It also plans to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise and OpenAI APIs across internal operations, turning itself into a testbed for clients looking to embrace AI at scale. Vijay Guntur, global CTO and head of ecosystems at HCLTech, said, “We are honoured to work with OpenAI… This collaboration underscores our commitment to empowering Global 2000 enterprises with transformative AI solutions.” This also casts a shadow on the ongoing clash between Microsoft and OpenAI regarding AI models and access to GPUs, to the extent that OpenAI turned to Google for several of its AI loads, which the company has now declined. Coming to HCLTech, in contrast to its earlier partnership with Microsoft in 2023—which was still mediated by Azure—this deal opens a new playbook. HCLTech isn’t just accessing APIs; it’s hosting them directly for its clients. And that changes the game, also for Microsoft and OpenAI. This partnership signals a gaping crack between OpenAI and Microsoft, where the former is directly seeking out clients from the latter, hinting at becoming a bigger competitor in the future. How it turns out and how much revenue HCLTech will earn from this might be revealed in the earnings call scheduled this month. In the last Q4 FY25 earnings call, even though the firm showed subdued Q4 FY25 results, HCLTech showed confidence in generative AI. The firm focused on exclusive AI and generative AI deals, securing 12 new agreements, including those involving agentic AI and automation processes. Read: HCLTech Shows Confidence in GenAI with 12 Exclusive Deals in the Quarter Meanwhile, in its Q3 FY25 results in January, HCLTech secured $2.1 billion in total contract value (TCV), with many deals embedding AI solutions. CEO C Vijaykumar said that the company is advancing its generative AI strategy and aims to integrate AI services into 100 clients by FY26. These announcements differ from those of other IT firms that have shied away from mentioning AI-specific deals. However, all the tech companies acknowledged that AI is part of every deal conversation. Vijaykumar emphasised that generative AI will remain a core focus for enterprises across all industries, despite broader macroeconomic uncertainties and pressure on discretionary spending. Speaking at an industry event in Mumbai in February, Vijayakumar emphasised that AI’s disruption in IT services is unlike previous technological shifts such as cloud computing and digital transformation. “The changes AI is assuring are very different, and we need to be more proactive to categorise our revenues to create completely new businesses,” he said. TCS, Infosys, and Wipro: Different Roads to the Same AI Future HCLTech’s move throws down the gauntlet to India’s IT elite while also showing a path forward for them to partner with AI startups. TCS, with ₹2.48 trillion in annual revenue and nearly 608,000 employees, is betting on scale. Its deepened partnership with NVIDIA and the launch of a dedicated AI cloud business unit show a preference for infrastructure-heavy, multi-industry solutions. While TCS claims success in AI-based fraud detection and NLP-driven contact centres, its strategy is rooted in foundational platform building, not exclusive access. Infosys is charting a more diversified course. Its Topaz platform now includes in-house small language models, like BankingSLM and ITOpsSLM built on NVIDIA’s stack, along with Meta’s Llama for contract analysis. With 225+ generative AI projects and agents deployed across verticals, Infosys is clearly hedging its bets—choosing modularity over exclusivity. Not many are aware that IT consulting giant Infosys, together with Elon Musk, AWS, YC Research, and a few others, had donated a sizable $1 billion to OpenAI back in 2015, when the latter began as a nonprofit organisation. But that deal didn’t go through. This might be one of the biggest hits for Infosys, if it does not partner with OpenAI or a competing startup in the coming weeks. Also read: Infosys’ Biggest GenAI Regret Ever Wipro is leaning into agentic AI templates for healthcare and pharma, while Tech Mahindra is targeting vernacular AI with Hindi models and Microsoft-backed enterprise search. Each player is experimenting with its own flavour of AI adoption. But none, until now, has attempted a direct handshake with OpenAI. The Microsoft-OpenAI Divorce Behind HCLTech’s announcement lies a deeper industry shakeup: the growing rift between Microsoft and OpenAI. Tensions over AGI access clauses, infrastructure lock-ins, and control over future development have pushed both firms to quietly diversify. OpenAI has signed compute deals with CoreWeave, Oracle, and even Google. Microsoft, meanwhile, has added Elon Musk’s xAI model Grok to Azure. The exclusivity clause in their partnership—particularly around the definition of AGI and Microsoft’s veto power over OpenAI’s public-benefit conversion—is now more of a bottleneck than a moat. Also read: When AGI Becomes Real, Microsoft May Lose Its $13 Billion Bet Microsoft has invested approximately $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019. However, OpenAI has since expanded its investor base. In October 2024, it closed a record-breaking $6.6 billion funding round from leading investors at a valuation of $157 billion. The $13 billion Microsoft bet on OpenAI is beginning to look less like ownership and more like a licensing fee—especially if OpenAI starts courting Microsoft’s own enterprise clients. India’s AI Market Is Too Big to Ignore for OpenAI With India’s IT services market projected to reach $75 billion by 2033 and IT exports expected to hit $210 billion this year, the opportunity is massive. OpenAI knows this. That is also why it recently joined in with IndiaAI Mission to help the adoption of AI in one of its largest user bases in the world. More importantly, 97% of Indian enterprises indicate that they’ll maintain or increase their AI investment in 2025. This is also ideal for OpenAI to start business directly, cutting out the middleman, Microsoft. The AI wave is also triggering a reskilling revolution. TCS, Infosys, and Wipro are working with NVIDIA to train half a million engineers. Demand for AI, ML, data, and cloud roles is set to rise by over 30% in the coming year. In short, the talent is ready, demand is present, and incumbents are in flux. The timing couldn’t be better. This partnership is more than a headline. It sets a precedent. Indian IT firms no longer need to act as middlemen to hyperscalers, and they are starting to take generative AI more seriously.
Will other IT giants follow suit?
HCLTech has announced a partnership with OpenAI in a multi-year strategic deal to drive enterprise AI with their frontier models.
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["ChatGPT", "GenAI", "agentic AI", "OpenAI", "AI", "ML", "NLP", "Aim", "generative AI", "xAI"]
["AI", "ML", "NLP", "generative AI", "GenAI", "agentic AI", "ChatGPT", "OpenAI", "xAI", "Aim"]
Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.