India Mastered Outsourcing. AI is a Different Test.
The country built a global empire and created millions of jobs by doing work others didn’t want to do. What happens when AI can do it, too?
In June 2024, Opendoor opened a “cutting-edge development center” in India. The announcement was celebratory, the kind of thing that gets circulated in WhatsApp groups as evidence that the growth of tech in Silicon Valley leads to riches that flow in both directions. But only two years later, in June 2026, Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian announced that the company was laying off all 250 employees in India. “Our customers are in America, and that’s where our operational work belongs,” he wrote.
Nejatian was careful to say the Indian team wasn’t the problem; he posted an “open reference letter” encouraging others to hire them. The real estate tech company had built its Indian operations to handle manual workflows. But now, with AI, that offshore work had simply ceased to exist.
Since the last dot-com bubble burst in 2000, India has been investing in IT services both at home and abroad, hitting a record $300 billion in revenue in 2026 alone. But with the rise of AI, more Indians — from venture capitalists to industry analysts and tech veterans — have a growing, gnawing suspicion: is India missing out on this century’s biggest technological shift? At a moment where youth frustration over education opportunities and unemployment has hit a breaking point, the future feels even more uncertain.