Opendoor, the San Francisco-based online home-buying platform, announced the shutdown of its India operations, less than two years after expanding its presence in the country. The decision reflects a broader trend as AI begins to reshape the economics of offshore work. CEO Kaz Nejatian cited a push to bring operational work back to the U.S., where the company’s customers are, and a shift toward smaller AI-native teams. The company did not disclose how many employees were affected or the extent to which AI efficiency influenced the decision. The move has sparked discussions in Silicon Valley about the implications for India’s outsourcing industry.
India has evolved beyond its roots as a back-office outsourcing hub, becoming the world’s largest Global Capability Center market. The country hosts over 2,100 such centers, employing about 2.36 million people and generating nearly $100 billion in annual revenue. Opendoor had built a large team in India to handle manual workflows across fragmented systems, with nearly 250 employees in Chennai and Bengaluru when it opened in 2024. However, the company has been scaling back its workforce in recent years, with global employment dropping to 1,042 at the end of last year, compared to 1,470 a year earlier. Non-U.S. employment also declined to 184 from 342 in 2024.
The India closure is part of broader cost-cutting efforts by Opendoor following a difficult period for the U.S. housing market, which hit online home-buying companies hard. Still, the language used by Nejatian to explain the move resonated with investors and analysts who see AI reshaping how companies organize operational work. Some viewed the decision as a sign of what AI could mean for India’s vast outsourcing workforce. Others saw it as a “watershed moment” for AI-driven operations, arguing that advances in AI are beginning to challenge the cost-arbitrage model that made India a popular offshoring destination.
Source: techcrunch
