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Anthropic on Wednesday said it plans to open its first office in India, entering a market where artificial intelligence usage is growing and its rival OpenAI is already making headway.
The Amazon-backed AI firm, valued at $183 billion, said it plans to open an office in Bengaluru in early 2026. It will be the company’s second office in Asia after Tokyo, Japan.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, is visiting India this week to meet with public officials and enterprise partners, the company said.
AI adoption among both consumers and businesses is expected to ramp up quickly in India. More than 90% of workers in the county already use AI, according to Boston Consulting Group, marking the highest adoption in the world.
“India is compelling because of the scale of its technical talent and the commitment from the Indian government to ensure the benefits of artificial intelligence reach all areas of society, not just concentrated pockets,” Amodei said in a press release.
Anthropic said its focus in India will be deploying AI for “social impact” in sectors like education and healthcare, as well as “supporting key industries through strategic partnerships.”
Claude is Anthropic’s key product and challenger to OpenAI. Anthropic said it would launch “enhanced performance” in Hindi for Claude, as well as nearly a dozen other languages spoken in India. Anthropic said India currently ranks second in terms of Claude usage, behind the U.S.
The company’s expansion into India comes as rival OpenAI has stepped up its push into the country this year. OpenAI launched a low-cost subscription plan for its flagship ChatGPT product and is also reportedly planning to open an office in the country.
Anthropic has some catching up to do, however. Claude was downloaded 118,000 times in August in India, versus 10.3 million ChatGPT downloads and 6.4 million of Perplexity, according to analytics firm Appfigures.
The India push is part of a broader global expansion plan for Anthropic as it grows its international workforce and looks to onboard more enterprise customers.