Anthropic to Open India Office, Eyes Collaboration with Reliance: AI Giants Double Down on Indian Expansion

Anthropic—one of the world’s fastest-growing AI startups—has announced plans to open its first India office in Bengaluru, hot on the heels of CEO Dario Amodei’s visit to Mumbai for talks with Reliance chief Mukesh Ambani. The move signals a new era of competition among global AI leaders, all vying for mindshare and market access in the nation’s booming tech ecosystem.

Why India? Why Now?

• India is now Anthropic’s #2 market globally (after the US), making up over 7% of all Claude usage, with numbers fueled by rapid uptake among developers, startups, and consumer users in 2025. Downloads of Anthropic’s Claude app saw a 48% YoY increase, and India leads outside the US for coding-related tasks on Claude.
• India’s digital market is the second largest in the world (over 1 billion internet users), and a hotbed for generative AI innovation, with the government investing in indigenous foundation model development and tech titans like Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta all scaling their India presence.

Partnering with Reliance Industries and Mukesh Ambani

• CEO Dario Amodei will meet with Mukesh Ambani and executives at Reliance, India’s largest conglomerate and parent of telecom giant Jio. The aim: explore joint efforts to expand access to Claude and build enterprise AI applications and infrastructure for Indian organizations.
• Reliance has already partnered with Google, Meta, and is actively seeking ambitious AI collaborations via its new “Reliance Intelligence” business unit.
• Anthropic’s approach—which targets developers, startups, and enterprise customers (not just consumer chatbots)—aligns closely with Reliance’s vision for India’s AI future.

Anthropic’s Edge in India’s Tech Market

• Anthropic’s Claude model is rapidly gaining traction among Indian startups for natural language, coding, and agentic applications. The company’s revenue has skyrocketed globally, with business customers surging from 1,000 in 2023 to over 300,000 today, and annual run-rate revenue nearing $1 billion.
• India’s developer community—among the world’s largest and youngest—is a major growth engine for AI model adoption. Over half of Claude’s India usage is for coding tasks, highlighting the “builders first” momentum.
• Bengaluru’s new office, to be inaugurated this week, will house R&D, developer outreach, and partnerships. Amodei’s trip includes meetings with PM Narendra Modi and workshops with major Indian venture funds.

The Broader AI Land Grab: OpenAI, Perplexity, and More

• OpenAI and Perplexity are also racing to build Indian presence. OpenAI will open a New Delhi office by year-end, having launched affordable ChatGPT subscriptions in India.
• Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, has sealed a partnership with telecom giant Bharti Airtel to offer Perplexity Pro subscriptions to 360 million Indian customers, showing AI’s growing integration with India’s largest consumer platforms.
• India’s government has fast-tracked incentives for homegrown AI models, while multinational tech companies are making local product launches and strategic investments a major priority.

Conclusion

Anthropic’s India launch, high-level meetings with Ambani, and developer-focused push reflect India’s dramatic rise as a global AI battleground. With startups, telcos, and AI giants all betting big on the country’s growth, India will shape how the next generation of enterprise and consumer AI is built, scaled, and regulated.

Sources: TechCrunch, Moneycontrol, Finance Yahoo, Economic Times, Storyboard18, Analytics India Magazine, LinkedIn, WSJ, Bharti Airtel, Perplexity, Times of India