Anthropic plans to open an office in India and plans a partnership with the Ambani billionaire

The co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, is in India this week, with the intention of creating an office in Bengaluru and exploring a partnership with Reliance Industries of Mukesh Ambani, learned Techcrunch. This decision testifies to the desire of the startup of IA to deepen its presence on its second market after the United States.

Amodei is expected to go to Mumbai to meet Ambani and other senior Reliance Industries, the most precious company in India and the parent company of the main telecommunications operator in the country, JIO reliance, TechCrunch told people close to the file. Anthropic has been in discussion with Reliance for some time about a potential partnership aimed at extending access to his assistant Claude AI in India, sources said.

India – the second online online market after China, with more than a billion Internet subscribers – has become a significant growth region for Anthropic. Several AI Indian startups already use its Claude models in their products for national and American customers. India also represents the second largest part of traffic on the Claude website after the United States, according to the digital intelligence company Similarweb.

In August, Reliance Industries joined forces with large technological companies, in particular its existing investors Google and Meta, to create an IA infrastructure and business solutions via its new unit, Reliance Intelligence. The Mumbai -based conglomerate also explored a potential collaboration with Openai, which deployed its Chatgpt plan for less than $ 5 in India earlier this year and announced its intention to open an office in New Delhi later in 2025.

This Reliance-Openai partnership was to be announced during the planned visit to the CEO of Openai, Sam Altman, India last month, but Altman finally postponed the trip.

Reliance Industries did not respond to a request for comments. Techcrunch also contacted Openai for comments.

Alongside Mumbai, Amodei goes to New Delhi to meet senior legislators and senior officials from the federal government, sources said. He should also meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, two people familiar with his travel projects told Techcrunch.

Later in the week, Amodei will be in Bangalore to announce the opening of the Anthropic office on Thursday, Sources in Techcrunch said. Guillaume Princen, head of Anthropic Emea, and Daniel Delaney, manager of startups, also accompany him. Eminent venture capital funds, including Accel and Lightspeed, also organize dedicated sessions this week with anthropic leaders to share ideas on the way developers and startups can take advantage of Claude for their offers.

The Claude d’Anthropic application, available on iOS and Android, recorded a 48 % increase in downloads from one year to India in September, reaching around 767,000 installations this year, according to Appfigures. Consumer expenses for the application in India jumped 572 % over a year, generating $ 195,000 in September, according to data.

The Indian figures remain modest, however, compared to those in the United States, where downloads increased by 91 % over one year and consumption expenditure by 604 %. American users spent $ 2.5 million on the Claude application in September, according to Appfigures. Globally, the application has recorded growth of 74 % of downloads, to 1.01 million, and an increase of 546 %, consumer spending, to $ 5.62 million in the same month.

Unlike Openai, which aims to establish a commercial and marketing configuration while supervising policies updates from New Delhi, Anthropic plans to target developers and startups with its office in Bangalore.

Anthropic sees its greatest use coming from India, a founder who works in close collaboration with the IA company, asking for anonymity, told Techcrunch.

Alongside Anthropic and Openai, Perplexity is also looking to operate the Indian market. The company has teamed up with the Indian telecommunications operator Bharti Airtel to offer its Perplexity Pro subscription to more than 360 million Airtel customers for 12 months. The AI ​​research startup has also refined its product for local users, in particular by launching transcriptions of live results for Indian actions in order to attract more commitment from India.

Anthropic did not respond to a comment request.