Anthropic to open first India office next year

Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, backed by Alphabet’s Google and Amazon.com, said on Tuesday it will open its first office in India next year, as it looks to tap into the country’s growing appetite for AI tools.

India has emerged as Anthropic’s second-largest market for consumer use of the cloud, thanks to its large language model that competes with OpenAI’s Chat. Cloud has carved a niche by demonstrating strong capabilities in coding, setting it apart in the crowded AI landscape.

The $183 billion company said its co-founder and CEO, Dario Amody, will visit India this week to meet public officials and corporate partners.

The new office will be located in Bengaluru, widely recognized as a technology hub of India, and will begin operations in early 2026, the company said. This location will serve as its second office in the Asia Pacific region after Tokyo.

Openai, backed by Microsoft, formally registered as a legal entity in India in August and has started building a local team. It plans to open its first India office in New Delhi later in 2025.

The company faces strong competition in India from rivals like Google’s Gemini and AI startup Perplexity, both of which have launched offerings that make their advanced plans free for many users in the market.