Anthropic will open its first India office in Bengaluru in early 2026, expanding its footprint beyond the United States and Japan. The company confirmed the move on 8 October 2025, describing India as one of its fastest-growing markets and a vital hub for AI innovation.
The announcement makes India Anthropic’s second base in Asia after Tokyo. It comes as usage of its Claude AI model surges across the region, with India now the company’s second-largest market globally. According to Reuters, the office will focus on product development and enterprise partnerships in education, healthcare, and agriculture.
Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, said the expansion reflects both rising demand for responsible AI tools and the country’s depth of technical talent. It also signals how global AI companies are diversifying their growth beyond Silicon Valley, using Asia as a launchpad for scale and talent access.
Bengaluru’s Pull On The AI Map
For years, Bengaluru has built a reputation as India’s tech capital — home to Google’s and Microsoft’s biggest research centres outside the US, and to hundreds of local AI startups. Anthropic’s choice of the city underlines its growing importance in the global AI landscape.
The company cited three reasons for the move: access to world-class engineers, proximity to enterprise clients already using Claude, and India’s national AI initiatives that aim to integrate AI into key public services.
Anthropic also plans to triple its international workforce over the next year, a sign of how quickly demand for generative AI is growing outside North America. Its India base is expected to support both domestic clients and global operations, including data research, product localisation, and customer support.
How India’s AI Growth Shifts The Global Equation
Anthropic’s move adds momentum to a shift already under way: the centre of gravity for AI development is broadening. India’s growing role as both a talent base and user market is beginning to reshape how global AI firms scale, train, and deploy their models.
For regions like the Middle East, this shift opens new doors. Gulf companies increasingly rely on AI tools for sectors such as logistics, finance, and education, but local engineering talent remains scarce. India’s ecosystem, with its mix of technical expertise and lower operational costs, could help fill that gap through partnerships and regional service hubs.
Bengaluru’s rise also means the Gulf’s emerging AI markets may soon find themselves collaborating with Indian research teams or adopting India-tested governance models. As major AI firms like Anthropic decentralise, proximity to India could make it easier for Middle Eastern governments and investors to access cutting-edge AI capabilities without waiting for Western expansion.
Partnerships, Policy And Potential
India’s growing weight in global AI aligns naturally with the ambitions of Gulf economies. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have all launched major national AI programmes but still depend heavily on imported talent and technology. Partnerships with Indian developers and research labs already exist in sectors like cloud infrastructure and education, and Anthropic’s new base could deepen that bridge.
The UAE’s Artificial Intelligence Office has previously collaborated with Indian institutions on ethics frameworks and AI policy design. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) also works with Indian researchers on language modelling and data science. Anthropic’s presence in Bengaluru gives these relationships a potential anchor — a place where regional agencies and investors can connect directly with the tools shaping global AI markets.
For Gulf policymakers, the opportunity lies in scale. India’s massive developer base and real-world deployment experience could support regional training initiatives and startup acceleration. For Anthropic, proximity to the Middle East’s growing AI demand could mean faster commercial pathways and more diverse applications of its Claude models.
India’s AI Rise Is A Global Story
Anthropic’s Bengaluru expansion shows how the geography of artificial intelligence is changing. Global firms are no longer concentrating their engineering power in Silicon Valley. They are building where the users, developers, and data are.
India’s combination of technical skill, market scale, and active policy support is making it the world’s new testbed for applied AI. For the Middle East, that shift matters. It creates a nearby source of expertise, talent, and partnership opportunities that can accelerate regional projects without waiting for Western timelines.
As Anthropic prepares to open its India office in 2026, it becomes clearer that the future of AI will be built through collaboration between fast-growing economies. For countries in the Gulf seeking to turn strategy into capability, India’s example offers a working model, and a powerful partner.
