Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company backed by Google’s Alphabet and Amazon, has announced plans to open its first office in India next year — a move that underscores how the South Asian nation has become the new frontier for American AI companies seeking global growth.

The new office, set to open in early 2026 in Bengaluru, will serve as Anthropic’s second Asia-Pacific hub after Tokyo. The expansion comes amid India’s accelerating adoption of AI technologies and China’s AI policies, which have seen the government tighten control over data and restrict access to Western AI platforms.

Co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is scheduled to visit India this week to meet with public officials and corporate partners, signaling Anthropic’s intent to deepen local partnerships and strengthen its foothold in the region. The company, valued at about $183 billion, said the Indian office will serve as a base for research, enterprise collaboration, and product localization.

As China doubles down on government-backed AI infrastructure — promoting its own models like Baidu’s Ernie Bot and Tencent’s Hunyuan, while effectively cutting off access to American AI systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini — global tech companies have turned to India as their preferred expansion ground.

India, now home to nearly one billion internet users, offers an open digital market with democratic regulation, a young, tech-savvy population, and a thriving startup culture. These conditions have made it an ideal destination for U.S. firms navigating geopolitical tension between Washington and Beijing.

Anthropic’s flagship product, Claude, has emerged as one of the fastest-growing AI assistants in India. The company revealed that India is now its second-largest consumer market, behind only the United States.

Claude’s strong coding and reasoning capabilities have made it especially popular among Indian developers and enterprises deploying AI for customer service, analytics, and software automation. Anthropic offers both free and paid versions of Claude in the market, but has not yet introduced local currency pricing, a move that analysts say could follow once the company establishes its Bengaluru office.

OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, formally registered as a legal entity in India in 2025 and also plans to open its first Indian office in New Delhi later this year. The company has already been in talks with Indian IT firms and educational institutions to integrate ChatGPT Enterprise into their systems, offering affordable subscription rates.

Meanwhile, Google’s Gemini and AI startup Perplexity are aggressively expanding in the Indian market. Both have rolled out free access to premium AI tools, aiming to capture users in a price-sensitive ecosystem while leveraging India’s enormous user base to refine their models.

China’s Walls vs. India’s Openness

This surge of American AI investment in India comes as Washington continues to tighten export restrictions on advanced chips and AI technologies to China, forcing U.S. companies to diversify their global reach. India’s openness to collaboration, paired with its growing digital infrastructure, has made it a strategic partner in the AI supply chain.

China’s government has launched massive efforts to build state-backed AI infrastructure, funding domestic chipmaking and encouraging the use of homegrown language models trained under censorship controls. The country has effectively blocked U.S. AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, while mandating strict state review of AI content.

India’s rise as a global AI hub is supported by a booming tech workforce exceeding 5 million, robust digital infrastructure, and one of the fastest-growing startup ecosystems in the world. The government’s AI Mission 2030 seeks to position the country as a leader in responsible AI research and deployment, emphasizing collaboration with global firms.

Anthropic’s Global Push

Anthropic’s expansion into India follows its announcement last month to triple its international workforce, as it races to meet global demand for its Claude 3 AI models. The company’s partnerships with both Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud give it access to vast cloud infrastructure, essential for scaling operations in new markets like India.

AWS has integrated Anthropic’s Claude models into its Bedrock AI platform, while Google has made Claude available through Vertex AI, giving enterprise clients flexibility in deploying advanced models. This dual alignment with two major cloud providers could prove critical to Anthropic’s ambitions in India, where cloud adoption is growing across finance, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Anthropic’s Bengaluru office is expected to focus on AI research, enterprise integration, and regional expansion, with hiring to begin in 2025.