Anthropic opens Sydney office, expands into ANZ

AI company Anthropic is expanding to Australia and New Zealand, and in the coming weeks, will open an office in Sydney.

The Sydney office will be the company's fourth office in Asia-Pacific, alongside Tokyo, Bengaluru, and Seoul.

The expansion reflects what the makers of the Claude series of LLMs says is "strong demand" from businesses in Australia and New Zealand and will help Anthropic better serve the countries’ "unique AI ecosystems".

In addition to hiring a team in Sydney, Anthropic also plan to "deepen its engagement" with Australian institutions, as well as collaborate on projects that advance Australia’s national interests and priority sectors.

The company's executive team will visit Australia at the end of March to formalise some of these partnerships and meet with customers and policymakers.

Anthropic's initial focus will be supporting its enterprise, startup, and research customers. It already working with enterprises like Canva, Quantium, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, as well as startups pioneering new AI applications across diverse fields such as AgTech, physical AI, climate tech and more.

Australia and New Zealand rank fourth and eight globally respectively in Claude.ai usage, relative to population, according to the company's latest Economic Index. Both countries show strong use of Claude for computer and coding tasks, along with educational instruction and research, according to the company, and its already begun building out a local team and partnerships aligned with these trends.

Anthropic said it is also exploring opportunities to expand its compute capacity in Australia, exploring adding local capacity through third-party partners in Australia, using infrastructure already in place.

This is among the most consistent requests Anthropic hears from Australian enterprises and government agencies, particularly those with data residency requirements, it claims.

The company said it is also in early conversations about longer-term infrastructure in the region.

“We’re excited by the ways organisations in Australia and New Zealand are applying AI to areas of national importance—financial services, agricultural technology, clean energy innovation, healthcare delivery, cutting-edge deep tech and scientific research, along with AI transformation in the enterprise,” said Chris Ciauri, MD of international for Anthropic.

“Establishing a local presence will help us to develop strong partnerships in ANZ and ensure Claude is built with respect for the unique goals, opportunities, and challenges of the region.”