OpenAI rival Anthropic announces first India office in Bengaluru
What's the story
Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) research company, has announced its plan to open its first Indian office in Bengaluru. The move comes as part of the company's global expansion strategy amid rising competition from tech giants like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta. Dario Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic and CEO, is visiting India this week to share the company's commitment toward responsible AI systems that drive social benefit and economic growth.
Future plans
Office to focus on building AI for local uses
Anthropic has revealed its plan to establish a dedicated local presence in India, starting with an office in Bengaluru. The office is expected to open by early 2026 and will focus on building AI for unique local uses across the country. The company also plans to invest heavily in enhancing the Indic language capabilities of its Claude AI assistant, which already supports major Indic languages.
Language focus
Training AI models on Indian languages
Anthropic is also focusing on training its AI models on nearly a dozen Indian languages, including Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, and Urdu. These efforts come as the company hopes to attract India's booming AI developer community. The move comes as tech giants like Google and Microsoft are rushing to launch AI models and tools for one of the world's largest developer bases.
Market growth
India is now largest market for Claude outside US
India is now the largest market for Anthropic's Claude AI assistant outside the US, accounting for 7.2% of global usage. However, per-capita usage remains low at just 0.27 times relative to the working-age population. A large portion of Claude's usage in India is focused on technical tasks and software development such as mobile UI development and web app debugging.
Regional growth
Bengaluru chosen for strong talent density, enterprise ecosystem
Bengaluru will be Anthropic's second office in the Indo-Pacific region after Tokyo, Japan. The company chose Bengaluru for its strong talent density and proximity to India's enterprise ecosystem. Paul Smith, Chief Commercial Officer of Anthropic, said their expansion comes at a crucial time when Indian enterprises and start-ups are looking for trustworthy AI models that combine frontier performance with safety and reliability required to support critical business operations at scale.