Anthropic, a prominent artificial intelligence (AI) startup globally, has announced its inaugural leadership appointment in India, naming Irina Ghose as managing director for the region. Ghose concludes a distinguished 24-year career at Microsoft India, where she ascended to the roles of chief operating officer and, more recently, managing director in June 2023. Her extensive experience at Microsoft included leading the company's education and cloud sales divisions in India.

This strategic appointment comes as competition among global AI enterprises intensifies, with companies vying to establish an early and significant presence in the Indian market. Ghose's hiring marks Anthropic's first leadership position in India. The move follows a significant announcement three months prior by Anthropic's founder and chief executive, Dario Amodei, regarding plans to establish the company's first Indian office in Bengaluru on October 7. Amodei also met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit.

Currently, Anthropic has listed three mid-level job openings in India, all of which are focused on AI sales roles. Furthermore, Amodei is scheduled to be a keynote speaker at the AI Impact Summit, an event hosted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in New Delhi from February 18-19. In a statement confirming Ghose’s appointment, Anthropic affirmed that India represents its second-largest market, a sentiment echoed by its competitor, OpenAI.

Founded in January 2021, Anthropic rapidly gained prominence during the generative AI surge that followed the public introduction of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022. Over the past five years, the startup has successfully secured $27.4 billion in funding. Reports from Reuters on January 7 indicated that Anthropic has signed a term sheet to raise an additional $10 billion, potentially valuing the company at approximately $350 billion. The company boasts a robust list of backers, including major tech giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, alongside financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and the Qatar Investment Authority.

Dario Amodei, who departed OpenAI in December 2020 due to disagreements with co-founder Sam Altman concerning the trajectory and governance of AI development, has positioned Anthropic’s flagship AI model, Claude, as a 'safety-first' alternative within the foundational AI space. While Anthropic has not officially disclosed adoption figures for Claude, it currently trails OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini in terms of user base. Public database Thunderbit reported that Claude had approximately 30 million monthly active users globally as of December 31, 2025. In comparison, ChatGPT reported 800 million active users as of October of the previous year, and Gemini reported 650 million.

During his visit to India last year, Amodei emphasized the country's compelling attributes, stating, “India is compelling because of the scale of its technical talent…There is deep alignment between the challenges India is tackling and our mission as a company, from deploying AI across diverse languages and contexts, to building frameworks for responsible governance.” He further articulated, "India's AI ecosystem will play a central role in how AI develops globally and democratically, and we’re looking forward to working with organizations in India to pave a path for how beneficial AI can be scaled in a way that serves everyone.”