Anthropic plans Australian office in global AI push

Anthropic is moving to establish a formal presence in Australia as part of a wider international expansion built around its Claude artificial intelligence models and growing enterprise customer base.

Recent corporate filings show Anthropic has applied to register an Australian subsidiary, Anthropic Australia, with the entity listed at the Sydney offices of law firm Baker McKenzie. The documents name California-based General Counsel Jeffrey Bleich and executive David Cowper as the company's Australian directors.

The company has not yet disclosed who will lead its Australian business or which functions will be based locally. The filing signals that Australia is being folded into a structured global footprint that already includes operations in Asia, Europe and North America.

Anthropic's Claude models are already available to Australian users. The company has secured local customers, including Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and has approval to supply products to non-corporate federal government agencies for use with official information.

Industry reports indicate high per-capita usage of Claude in Australia, alongside markets such as South Korea and Singapore, placing local demand well above that of many larger economies.

Hiring plans

Anthropic has advertised for a "founding" recruiter to help build Australia and New Zealand teams across sales, partnerships, applied AI, marketing, revenue operations and communications. The role is framed as laying the foundation for the company's long-term presence in the region.

This local recruitment sits within a more ambitious global hiring programme. The company has signalled plans to triple its international workforce and expand its applied AI team fivefold as it builds out dedicated country operations. It is recruiting country leads for India, Australia and New Zealand, Korea and Singapore, while also growing headcount across the UK and continental Europe.

Anthropic is opening its first Asia office in Tokyo and adding more than 100 roles in Dublin and London, as well as a research hub in Zurich. Additional locations are expected to follow as enterprise adoption grows.

Enterprise demand

Anthropic says Claude now serves more than 300,000 enterprise customers worldwide, up from under 1,000 two years ago. Nearly 80 per cent of usage comes from outside the United States, underlining the importance of markets such as Australia to the company's growth.

"You need the applied AI team that understands their particular industry context," said Paul Smith, Chief Commercial Officer, Anthropic.

Claude is being deployed in sectors including sovereign wealth management, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, financial services and government. Norges Bank Investment Management has reported productivity gains of about 20 per cent across 9,000 portfolio companies, equivalent to 213,000 hours saved on investment analysis. Novo Nordisk has used Claude to compress clinical documentation times from more than ten weeks to minutes and to reduce review cycles.

In Asia, SK Telecom is integrating Claude into customer service operations and has reported a 34 per cent uplift in service quality metrics. In Australia, Commonwealth Bank has used Claude-powered systems to cut scam losses by around half. The European Parliament has applied the technology to make millions of historical documents searchable and translatable.

"The demand signal we've got is unprecedented. It's like nothing I've ever seen," said Smith.

Anthropic's Claude Code product, launched for software development workloads, has already reached a revenue run-rate of about USD $500 million, with usage increasing tenfold in three months. The tool is being used for code review, test generation and other engineering tasks inside large organisations.

Revenue growth

Anthropic's expansion plans rest on rapid revenue growth. The company's revenue run-rate has risen from about USD $87 million at the start of 2024 to around USD $5 billion, driven by enterprise adoption of the Claude family of models.

Media reports have put Anthropic's valuation in a range between roughly USD $183 billion and USD $350 billion, based on recent funding rounds. That capital has allowed the company to invest heavily in its own infrastructure as it seeks to reduce dependence on third-party cloud providers and support global demand.

The company is positioning Claude as a direct, "pure-play" AI platform for enterprises, in contrast to rivals that package AI primarily through broader productivity suites or cloud bundles. At the same time, Anthropic continues to distribute its models through partners such as AWS and Google Cloud to fit existing customer architectures.

Australian market

Australia has emerged as a focus market in Anthropic's Asia-Pacific strategy, combining strong cloud infrastructure, an active data centre pipeline and a policy agenda that aims to attract foreign technology investment. The arrival of both OpenAI and Anthropic follows a series of government initiatives to build local AI capability and encourage large-scale digital infrastructure projects.

Anthropic's planned Australian office is expected to create roles across sales, research and engineering, adding local capacity for regulated sectors such as banking, healthcare, telecoms and the public sector. The company is also investing in data sovereignty features and 24/7 support, which are often prerequisites for large enterprise and government deployments.

"That's a super important differentiator as you think about how you really maximize results for enterprise," said Chris Ciauri, Managing Director of International, Anthropic.

Claude now has more than 300,000 enterprise customers globally, with almost four-fifths of its usage generated outside the United States.