Anthropic plans to open India office, eyes tie-up with billionaire Ambani (techcrunch.com)

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is in India to open a Bengaluru office and explore a strategic tie-up with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, including meetings in Mumbai and Delhi with Reliance executives and senior government officials. The visit, which may include a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, signals Anthropic’s push to deepen its presence in its second‑largest market and to expand distribution of its Claude models and assistant via partnerships with major Indian players. Anthropic plans the Bengaluru office to focus on developers and startups rather than a sales/policy hub, and is bringing senior executives to brief VCs and local founders on integrating Claude into products. The move is significant because India is a major growth region for generative AI: it’s the second‑largest source of traffic to Claude’s site (after the U.S.) and several Indian startups already embed Claude in their offerings. App metrics show Claude’s installs in India reached about 767,000 this year with a 48% YoY jump in September and consumer spending surging 572% YoY to $195K that month (vs. $2.5M in the U.S.). A Reliance partnership—given Reliance Jio’s distribution reach and its Reliance Intelligence AI initiative with partners like Google and Meta—could accelerate enterprise and consumer access to Claude at scale, reshape competitive dynamics with OpenAI and Perplexity in India, and influence how AI services integrate with local telecom and enterprise infrastructure.