Sandhya Devanathan, a senior Meta executive who most recently led the company’s policy and public affairs work in India, is leaving the social media giant after roughly a decade to join OpenAI as Vice President for South East Asia and Australia, OpenAI confirmed.
Her appointment underscores the rapid build-out of senior commercial and government-facing leadership at OpenAI across Asia-Pacific, as the company behind ChatGPT scales its regional presence in territories where regulators are actively drafting artificial intelligence rules and enterprises are accelerating adoption of generative AI tools.
What happened
Devanathan will take on a regional vice president remit at OpenAI that spans South East Asia and Australia, a geography that includes some of the world’s most active AI rule-making jurisdictions. Her role will combine commercial expansion with government and policy engagement — a portfolio that has become increasingly central to how AI labs operate outside the United States.
At Meta, Devanathan served as the company’s most senior policy and public affairs figure in India, frequently representing the firm before government ministries, regulators, parliamentary panels, and civil society groups. Her tenure covered multiple high-stakes regulatory disputes, including contentious periods over content moderation, the compliance of Meta’s platforms with India’s Information Technology Rules, and the company’s response to demands for greater data localization. She was regularly the corporate face of Meta in New Delhi during periods of intense political and public scrutiny.
Her exit closes a roughly ten-year run at Meta, where she held a series of increasingly senior positions across policy, partnerships, and government relations. The departure comes against the backdrop of significant workforce changes at Meta, which has reorganized around its artificial intelligence ambitions through substantial layoffs and restructuring of policy and trust-and-safety functions.
Why it matters
The hire is significant for three reasons. First, it signals that OpenAI considers the South East Asia-Australia region strategically important enough to warrant a senior, politically attuned leader based in or closely connected to the market, rather than a satellite operation managed from San Francisco. Second, it reflects a broader pattern of senior talent migrating from established social media platforms to AI labs, where commercial and policy functions are converging under pressure from regulators. Third, it positions OpenAI to engage more directly with governments in jurisdictions that are actively writing the rules for artificial intelligence, including Singapore, Australia, and ASEAN member states.
Devanathan’s experience in India — a market where global platforms have faced repeated government and parliamentary scrutiny — suggests OpenAI is preparing for similar regulatory friction as it expands across a region with diverse legal traditions, languages, and political systems.
Background and context
OpenAI has moved aggressively to expand its international footprint through 2025 and into 2026, signing partnerships with regional resellers, cloud providers, and telecommunications carriers, and beginning to localize its offerings for non-English markets. The company faces intensifying competition from Anthropic, Google, and a growing roster of regional AI providers, all of whom are courting enterprise customers in markets such as Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Australia.
Governments across the region have responded to the spread of generative AI with a mix of legislation, voluntary frameworks, and sector-specific guidance. Singapore has been among the most active, publishing AI governance frameworks and working with industry on safety testing. Australia has advanced legislation targeting high-risk AI uses. ASEAN member states have begun coordinating on a regional AI guide, though the pace and ambition of national-level rules vary widely.
Devanathan’s career arc mirrors the trajectory of a generation of executives who came of age managing policy battles for global platforms in emerging markets. Her move to OpenAI places her among a small group of senior women leading major regional operations in the global AI industry, and her prior experience navigating India’s complex digital policy environment is likely to shape how she engages with governments across the diverse regulatory landscapes of her new territory.
Analysis: The appointment reflects OpenAI’s calculation that scaling across Asia-Pacific requires leadership with deep government relationships and on-the-ground political fluency, not just technical or commercial credentials. By hiring a former Meta policy lead rather than a traditional enterprise sales executive, OpenAI is signaling that regulatory engagement is now a first-order commercial priority — a meaningful shift from the company’s earlier posture, when its regional presence was thinner and more focused on developer and enterprise adoption. The hire also underscores how AI labs are increasingly competing with social media companies for the same limited pool of executives who understand both the technology and the political environment in which it is being deployed.
What to watch next
The specific location from which Devanathan will operate, the size of the team she is building, and the timing of her formal start at OpenAI will be closely watched by competitors, partners, and regulators across the region. Industry observers will also be looking for early signals about how OpenAI plans to position itself in policy debates in Singapore, Jakarta, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Hanoi, and Canberra, where frameworks for AI transparency, copyright, data protection, and safety are being negotiated.
OpenAI’s next moves in the region — including additional hires, partnerships with regional resellers and cloud providers, and any public engagement with regulators — will indicate whether the company is preparing for a more assertive policy stance or a more cautious, partnership-driven approach. The reaction of competitors, particularly Anthropic and Google’s regional leadership, will also be a marker of how the market views the significance of the appointment.
Conclusion
Sandhya Devanathan’s departure from Meta and her appointment as OpenAI’s Vice President for South East Asia and Australia mark a significant moment in the regional realignment of senior technology talent around artificial intelligence. Her move reflects both the strategic importance of Asia-Pacific to OpenAI’s global ambitions and the growing recognition that AI companies need government-facing leadership capable of operating in politically complex environments. As regulators across the region sharpen their focus on generative AI, her tenure will be closely watched as an early test of how OpenAI intends to engage with the rules being written for the technology.
Sources:
– The Hindu – National, “Sandhya Devanathan exits Meta after a decade; to join OpenAI as VP South East Asia, Australia” – https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/sandhya-devanathan-exits-meta-after-a-decade-to-join-openai-as-vp-south-east-asia-australia/article71403430.ece
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Story synopsis gathered from: The Hindu – National — source
