Opendoor shuts down its India operations and points to AI-driven teams

In short: Opendoor is closing its India operations as it moves some operational work back to the U.S. and focuses on smaller teams built around AI.

What happened

Opendoor, a San Francisco company that buys and sells homes online, is shutting down its India operations less than two years after expanding there. CEO Kaz Nejatian said the company wants operational work closer to its U.S. customers and is shifting toward smaller “AI-native” teams, meaning teams designed to use AI tools as a core part of daily work.

Opendoor opened offices in Chennai and Bengaluru in 2024 and had nearly 250 employees in India at the time. The company did not say how many people are affected by the closure, and it did not confirm how much of the decision was directly tied to AI improving efficiency.

The move is getting attention because India is now the world’s largest market for Global Capability Centers, often called GCCs. These are dedicated overseas offices that large companies set up to handle work like IT, finance, customer support, and research, like a “second headquarters” focused on operations. Reuters has reported India has more than 2,100 GCCs, employing about 2.36 million people and generating nearly $100 billion in annual revenue.

Opendoor has also been cutting staff more broadly. Its filings show it had 1,042 employees globally at the end of last year, down from 1,470 a year earlier.

Why it matters

This is a real-world example of a question many companies are asking: if AI can handle more routine tasks, will businesses need fewer large offshore teams to do “back-office” work. Some analysts argue the bigger shift is not jobs moving from India to the U.S., but fewer people being needed overall, no matter where the work is done.

Source: TechCrunch AI