Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei will be in India this week with the aim of setting up an office in Bengaluru and exploring a partnership with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, according to a report by TechCrunch. The report comes as Anthropic’s biggest rival OpenAI has slowly been ramping up its presence in India as well, which it calls its biggest market after the US.
Reportedly, Amodei could visit Mumbai to meet Ambani and other senior executives at Reliance Industries. Anthropic is said to have been in discussions with Reliance for some time in order to expand access to its Claude AI chatbot in the country.
Apart from Mumbai, Amodei is also said to be visiting New Delhi to meet top lawmakers and senior officials in the central government including PM Narendra Modi.
Amodei is then expected to be in Bengaluru to announce the AI startup’s office opening on Thursday. He is also said to be joined by Anthropic’s EMEA head Guillaume Princen and startups chief Daniel Delaney.
Anthropic’s growing popularity in India:
As per Appfigures data cited by TechCrunch, the Claude app on iOS and Android has registered a 48% year-over-year increase in downloads in India in September and has reached the 7,67,000 installs mark this year. Moreover, the consumer spending on the app has also increased 572% year over year and $1,95,000 was generated in September alone.
Earlier in the year, OpenAI had announced its plans to open its first office in India in New Delhi. The company also began hiring in the country and is expected to set up a sales and marketing team.
Anthropic, on the other hand, is planning to increase its presence in the country in order to target developers and startups with its Bengaluru office.
Meanwhile, OpenAI had also announced a ₹399 ChatGPT Go subscription in India in order to provide users with a longer access window for its GPT-5 model. The new report gives no projections on if a similar effort could be expected from Anthropic.
Currently, Anthropic‘s Pro plan is priced at $17 per month while the top tier Max plan is priced at $100 per month. While users can access Claude AI for free through its app, they would need to buy a plan in order to get extended access to its AI or tune into the top-end models.
