Mumbai: From Meta to a new AI chapter. Sandhya Devanathan is set to join OpenAI as vice president for Southeast Asia and Australia, marking a major leadership move as the ChatGPT maker looks to deepen its presence across the region.
Devanathan will take up the newly created role in October and will be based in Singapore. She will become OpenAI’s senior-most leader for Southeast Asia, overseeing consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regional operations and engagement with regulators. She will report to Kiran Mani, OpenAI’s managing director for Asia-Pacific. OpenAI has confirmed the appointment.
The move comes shortly after Devanathan announced her departure from Meta following more than a decade with the company. In a LinkedIn post on Friday, she described the decision as “bittersweet” and said she would take a short break before moving on to her next professional chapter.
Devanathan joined Meta in 2016, when the company’s Singapore office had around 300 employees. During her tenure, she worked across e-commerce and gaming in Asia-Pacific and held leadership roles across India and Southeast Asia. She most recently served as vice president and head of India and Southeast Asia.
She became Meta’s vice president for India in January 2023, succeeding Ajit Mohan, and later took on responsibility for Southeast Asia as well. In 2025, Meta appointed Arun Srinivas as managing director and head of India, with Devanathan continuing to oversee the broader India and Southeast Asia remit.
In her farewell message, Devanathan highlighted several initiatives from her Meta tenure, including the use of WhatsApp for government citizen services in India, small businesses setting up storefronts in Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, and startups scaling into unicorns across Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Her move to OpenAI comes as the company steps up its expansion across Asia. Southeast Asia is particularly important to OpenAI, with Indonesia and the Philippines among its top 10 markets globally by ChatGPT users, according to the company. The region and Australia together represent a market of more than 600 million people.
OpenAI has expanded its regional footprint in recent years, opening offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney and New Delhi. The company has also strengthened its Asia-Pacific leadership, with Mani joining as managing director in March and Prabhjeet Singh joining from Uber in June to lead its India business.
Devanathan’s appointment places a seasoned regional operator at the centre of OpenAI’s next phase of expansion, particularly as the company competes with rivals including Anthropic and Google for users, businesses and partnerships across Asia.
After a decade helping Meta build businesses across some of the region’s fastest-growing digital markets, Devanathan is now set to bring that experience to OpenAI’s push to turn AI adoption into a broader consumer and enterprise opportunity.
