Anthropic CEO Meets PM Modi, Confirms India Expansion

Anthropic founder and CEO Dario Amodei met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi to discuss the company’s push into India, including plans to open a Bengaluru office in early 2026. The meeting underlines Anthropic’s intent to deepen commercial and developer engagement, expand Indic-language support, and explore sectoral AI deployments across education, healthcare, and agriculture.

Expansion plans and local footprint

Anthropic announced that it will open its first India office in Bengaluru in early 2026 to better serve the country’s growing AI ecosystem and rising demand for its Claude models. The company told CIOL that India currently ranks second globally in Claude usage, behind only the United States, a statistic Anthropic cited in recent briefings to underscore market momentum.

In a post on X, Amodei wrote, “Today I met with PM @narendramodi to discuss Anthropic's expansion to India — where Claude Code use is up 5× since June. How India deploys AI across critical sectors like education, healthcare, and agriculture for over a billion people will be essential in shaping the future of AI.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded, “Glad to meet you. India’s vibrant tech ecosystem and talented youth are driving AI innovation that is human-centric and responsible. We welcome Anthropic’s expansion and look forward to working together to harness AI for growth across key sectors.”

Anthropic highlights that a large share of Claude usage in India is technical—developers use Claude Code for mobile UI development, web app debugging and other programming tasks. Major Indian enterprises such as CRED have already integrated Claude Code into development workflows, signalling early commercial traction. Anthropic says the Bengaluru office will help scale enterprise partnerships and product support across India and nearby regions.

The company is making India an experimental location for applied AI in the sectors of public interest. Education, healthcare and agriculture were the only sectors identified in the meeting where AI could bring societal benefits at scale, especially when deployments are accompanied by local data, domain expertise and governance protections.

Language assistance and inclusion

Anthropic is increasing Indic-language support: Claude currently supports Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Urdu, as indicated by the company. The push appeals to a significant adoption challenge in India, the language and local context thereof, and may expand access to both developers and non-English-native users.

Policy, partnerships and perception

The meeting is as much a commercial signal as a diplomatic one. In the case of Anthropic, direct relations with the national leadership may facilitate any regulatory alignment, talent relationships and pilot programmes in the government. In the case of India, calling in global AI labs is linked to more comprehensive objectives: establishing a local capacity, employment, and influencing the regulation of frontier AI technologies.

Anthropic’s global expansion comes amid broader moves by AI firms to intensify international operations: the company has signalled hiring growth in Europe and elsewhere. Anthropic also recently named senior executives to lead international expansion and raised large-scale capital to fund growth — moves that make its India entry timely.

Considerable Points

• Bengaluru office timeline and hiring: how quickly Anthropic hires local research and applied AI talent.
• Enterprise pilots: the scope and scale of public- and private-sector pilots in education, healthcare and agriculture.
• Regulatory engagement: how Anthropic navigates data localisation, safety rules and collaboration with Indian regulators.

Modi meeting formalises Anthropic’s India pivot: a mix of commercial expansion, developer engagement and policy signalling. If Anthropic can pair product capabilities with local partnerships and governance-ready deployments, India could become a major node in the company’s global strategy — and a testing ground for responsible, large-scale AI adoption.