ChatGPT-maker Sam Altman receives Indonesia's first-ever golden visa

Officials on Monday announced that Indonesia has granted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman the nation's first golden visa in an effort to draw affluent international investors to Southeast Asia's largest economy.

Altman was granted a 10-year visa, which the director-general of immigration, Silmy Karim, confirmed in a statement on Monday, in recognition of his prospective contributions to the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) in Indonesia.

"Once the holders of Golden Visa arrive in Indonesia, they no longer need to apply for a temporary stay permit at the immigration office," Karim said.

According to the statement, the 38-year-old would be able to skip immigration lines at Indonesian airports and travel in and out of the nation more quickly with the golden visa.

Indonesia has introduced golden visas for investors, granting them a five-year stay after spending $2.5 million there and a 10-year stay after investing twice that much.

As the AI business grows globally, the nation wants to create a community and ecosystem there, according to officials.

Altman has not yet made his investment plans in Indonesia public, but his recent trip to Jakarta to give a speech on the future of AI suggests that he is quite interested in the country's technical environment, Mint reported.

The visa may open the door to partnerships that advance Indonesia's reputation in the AI and technology industries.

By encouraging investments in AI infrastructure, OpenAI, under Altman's direction, has attracted interest on a worldwide scale.

ChatGPT is one of the tools the company has created that has transformed the way artificial intelligence is approached by using large data centres to simulate human intelligence.

As a result, there have been numerous investments made worldwide to build and expand infrastructures that support AI.