AI labs target Asia's operating talent
Silicon Valley's AI talent wars have shifted to Asia, where OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring senior executives from U.S. tech giants to build sales teams and policy relationships in India and Southeast Asia. The poaching targets leaders from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, marking at least nine such hires by U.S. AI companies in Asia in the past year.
Last month, Meta's India and Southeast Asia vice president Sandhya Devanathan left after a decade to join OpenAI as vice president for Southeast Asia and Australia. The move signals how OpenAI Courses and related AI expansion efforts now depend on executives who can convert model capabilities into regional market adoption.
In the U.S., frontier AI labs compete mostly for researchers and engineers. In Asia, the more sought-after executives are those who can handle partnerships, policy, and business development. "Once a company decides [a region] is a strategic growth market, you start looking for executives who can essentially operate as mini-CEOs," Deepali Vyas, global head of data and AI executive search at ZRG Partners, told Rest of World.
A small pool of proven operators
The talent shortage is acute. Arjun Jaggi, an applied AI researcher and executive adviser to Fortune 500 companies, said the number of executives in India who have run a country-level P&L for a global tech company, negotiated with Indian regulators, and built enterprise trust is "maybe a few hundred people across all of Big Tech India."
OpenAI's first hire in India, Pragya Mishra, came from Truecaller but was the first WhatsApp hire in the country. OpenAI's Asia-Pacific director Kiran Mani joined from JioStar in March after 13 years at Google. Devanathan's Meta experience spans consumer platforms, gaming, commerce, business messaging, payments, advertisers, and partnerships.
Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, said the prized asset is "dual institutional literacy: knowing how a U.S.-headquartered company allocates capital and risk, and knowing how Indian customers, governments, and partners turn global strategy into local reality."
Why experience can't be manufactured
The competition for the same executives reflects a structural constraint. "At the leadership level, the scarcity is more pronounced because experience cannot be created overnight," said Neeti Sharma, CEO of TeamLease Digital. "Most of the large technology companies are increasingly competing for the same relatively small group of proven executives."
Sharma said the pool will expand over time as leaders emerge from global capability centers, SaaS companies, startups, and digital businesses. For now, AI companies are paying a premium for people who have already navigated regulatory and commercial hurdles in Asian markets.
Why this matters for executives and strategy
If you hold a senior operating role at a U.S. tech company with Asia-Pacific exposure, you are now a recruitment target for frontier AI labs. The value signal is clear: regional P&L ownership, regulatory negotiation experience, and enterprise relationship depth are the credentials AI companies will pay for. For those building teams, the constraint is equally sharp - the candidate pool is a few hundred people, and competitors are fishing in the same pond. Planning for leadership succession in Asia now means either developing internal candidates with dual-market fluency or accepting a bidding war. For more on how AI is reshaping executive decision-making, see AI for Executives & Strategy.
Your membership also unlocks:
