PM Modi Meets Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei

AI major Anthropic’s cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei yesterday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi. 

In a post on X, Amodei said that the two discussed Anthropic’s expansion plans for India and advancing the deployment of AI in the country. 

“… I met with PM @narendramodi to discuss Anthropic’s expansion to India—where Claude Code use is up 5X 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,” read Amodei’s post. 

Responding to his post, PM Modi said that the Centre was looking forward to working with Anthropic to harness the technology for growth across key sectors. 

“… 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,” said PM Modi. 

Anthropic’s India Playbook

Founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei, Anthropic is the company behind popular chatbot Claude. The company claims to be focussed on developing “ethical and reliable” large language models (LLMs).  

The meeting comes as Anthropic is looking to deepen its presence in India. In a statement, the company said that it plans to open its first India office in Bengaluru by early 2026. Anthropic also plans to hire a local “in-market team” focussed on building AI solutions for unique India-centric use cases. 

Additionally, the company said that it plans to prioritise model training for nearly a dozen additional languages, including vernacular ones like Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, and Urdu. 

The AI major said that its India playbook centres on catering to startups, and deploying AI for social impact in sectors such as education, healthcare and agriculture. 

The company also said that it plans to collaborate with government agencies and non-profits for local public health initiatives and pilot AI-powered learning tools. “The company will also work with accelerators and social entrepreneurs to integrate AI into locally-relevant solutions,” added the AI major. 

That said, CEO Amodei is also expected to meet Mukesh Ambani and other senior Reliance Industries (RIL) executives during his ongoing visit to India later this week. The AI company is said to be exploring a deal to expand access to its Claude AI assistant in India.

While the details are still scarce, Anthropic could be looking to follow Perplexity’s suit. The rival’s founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas met PM Modi in December last year, following which Perplexity also rolled out its Pro subscription for free (for a year) to Reliance Jio rival Airtel’s users. 

On the other hand, another major rival has also been making deep inroads into the country. In August, OpenAI said that it would set up its office in Delhi later this year. The company also appointed former Coursera MD Raghav Gupta to lead its education vertical for India and Asia Pacific, and former Meta marketing lead Sheeladitya Mohanty as marketing head for India. 

Alongside, the Sam Altman-led company also rolled out ChatGPT Go in India at INR 399 per month, its most affordable subscription tier globally. Meanwhile, Google, too, has been offering its Gemini Pro subscription for free to Indian students. 

The global AI giants are making a beeline for the country as the Centre has been pushing the pedal on building an indigenous LLM. Earlier this year, the government selected five startups including names such as SarvamAI, Soket AI and Gnani.ai, to build Indic AI models.

At the heart of all this is India’s growing GenAI landscape, which is projected to become a $17 Bn opportunity by 2030.