Opendoor built its business around the simple idea of making home sales faster, easier, and less stressful.
The real estate technology company lets homeowners request cash offers online, avoid some of the uncertainty of traditional listings, and close more quickly.
But behind that consumer-facing pitch is a complicated operation.
Opendoor buys homes, prices them, repairs them, carries them on its balance sheet, and then resells them at the right price.
That makes the company highly dependent on data, speed, housing-market demand, and the people and systems that drive each transaction.
Now Opendoor is changing how that work gets done.
The company is shutting down its India operations.
The move comes less than two years after Opendoor expanded its India footprint with new offices in Hyderabad and Bengaluru, in addition to its existing Chennai operations.
At the time, the company said its India teams would support customer experience, infrastructure, security, transaction tooling, finance, data analytics, machine learning, and operational efficiency.
That expansion is now being reversed.
Opendoor cuts jobs in AI-driven shift
In a note to employees shared on X (the former Twitter), Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian said the company had nearly 250 employees in India when it launched Opendoor 2.0 a few months ago.
He said some of those jobs had already been relocated to the United States, and the company is now finalizing the process of winding down its India-based operations.
“This affects all of our colleagues in India who have done meaningful work for Opendoor,” Nejatian wrote.
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He said the decision was not a reflection of the quality of the employees’ work and said Opendoor would provide transition packages, including severance, outplacement services, and other resources.
A small group of employees will remain temporarily to complete key transition workstreams.
But the reason for the move was clear.
Nejatian said Opendoor had built a large India team over the years to handle manual workflows across fragmented systems.
As the company unified those systems and hired smaller “AI-native” customer-facing teams across the U.S., he said the operational work needed to be done in person and closer to customers.
That is the part of the announcement that makes the layoffs bigger than one company.
Opendoor is not just moving work from one location to another. It is saying the work itself has changed.
Nejatian said Opendoor 2.0 will be “a much smaller company by headcount” but “a much larger company by impact.”
He also said the company plans to simplify operations by using fewer tools, fewer steps, fewer workarounds, and one platform that shows how a home moves through the buying, renovation, and sale process.
Bloomberg / Getty Images
India outsourcing model faces pressure
Opendoor’s move does not mean companies are abandoning India. The country remains a major global hub for technology, finance, analytics, customer support, and back-office operations.
Large companies still employ tens of thousands of workers there, and many are building higher-value teams in areas such as AI, cybersecurity, software development, risk, and data analytics.
But the kind of work companies want from India is changing.
For years, U.S. companies used offshore teams to handle manual, support, finance, customer service, and operational workflows at lower cost.
That model is now under pressure from two sides: AI tools that can automate more routine work, and pressure to bring more service and operations jobs back home to the U.S.
Opendoor is one example. Standard Chartered is another.
Standard Chartered plans to cut more than 7,000 jobs over four years as it replaces “lower-value human capital” work with technology, Reuters recently reported. Back-office centers including Chennai and Bengaluru are among the affected locations.
Companies are not necessarily leaving India. They are becoming more selective about which work stays there.
Opendoor still faces housing pressure
The shift also comes as Opendoor works through a difficult housing market.
In the first quarter of 2026, Opendoor reported revenue of $720 million, down from $1.15 billion a year earlier. The company sold 1,921 homes, down from 2,946 in the year-earlier quarter.
Its net loss widened to $173 million from $85 million a year earlier. But the company’s gross margin improved to 10% from 8.6%.
The company noted that its acquisition contracts were back at 2022 levels, resulting in a resale contribution margin at its “highest level in nearly two years,” said Nejatian.
That shows why operational efficiency is important for the company.
Opendoor’s model can become more challenging when buyers are cautious, mortgage rates remain elevated, and homes take longer to sell.
The company has to price homes accurately, manage renovation costs, and sell inventory fast enough to protect margins.
For investors, the India exit may look like part of a broader effort to make Opendoor leaner and more automated.
For workers, it is a sign that AI-related job disruption is moving beyond Big Tech. It is now reaching operational and support roles that companies once sent overseas because they were cheaper to run there.
Related: Zillow has bad news for first-time homebuyers