Devanathan will be based in Singapore and will report directly to OpenAI’s Asia-Pacific managing director, Kiran Mani. According to OpenAI, her responsibilities will span consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement, and operations across Southeast Asia and Australia. She is leaving Meta after more than a decade, a period during which the company has faced increasing scrutiny over issues like online safety and content moderation. A person familiar with the matter noted that Devanathan was part of the decision-making process at the company in the country.

Her appointment comes just days after Prabhjeet Singh joined OpenAI as its India head. Singh previously spent over ten years at Uber, where he led the company’s India and South Asia operations. OpenAI has been steadily expanding its footprint across the Asia-Pacific region, having opened offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, and Delhi over the past two years.

Devanathan originally joined Meta in 2016 and took on multiple leadership roles during her tenure, including heading the company’s Asia-Pacific gaming business. In June of last year, she was promoted to vice president for India and Southeast Asia. Meta has recently come under mounting pressure from Indian authorities. Earlier this month, the company issued an apology after Instagram mistakenly restricted a post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July. In response, the Indian government summoned Meta executives, including chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan, to address the incident.

New Delhi has also voiced concerns about child sexual abuse material appearing on Meta’s platforms. Last month, the Indian government requested an explanation from the company following a BBC report that highlighted Instagram advertisements allegedly providing access to such content. Meta responded in a blog post at the time, stating that it had removed the violating ads and accounts, and rejected any suggestion that it knowingly targeted users with such advertisements based on inappropriate interests. The company also pointed out that it had removed 160,000 accounts in India over a six-month period based on signals indicating child-exploitative activity.