US artificial intelligence giant Anthropic, the company behind Claude, which dethroned ChatGPT at No. 1 on the App Store after a falling out over AI guardrails with the Trump administration Pentagon, will open at office in Sydney.
It will be Anthropic’s fourth Asia-Pacific base, alongside Tokyo, Bengaluru, and Seoul.
Anthropic’s US executives will visit Australia at the end of March to sign local partnerships and meet with customers and policymakers.
The Australian move comes as the business is mired in an existential battle with the Trump administration over how its AI is used by the military.
US legal fight
On Monday Anthropic began legal action in California over being blacklisted because the US startup refused to let the Pentagon to use its AI to surveil US citizens or deploy autonomous weapons.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk when CEO Dario Amodei refused to remove guardrails.
“These actions are unprecedented and unlawful. The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech,” Anthropic’s lawsuit said, seeking to overturn the designation.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman cut a deal with the Pentagon days later, sparking a blacklash against its product ChatGPT, pushing Claude to the top of the app charts as AI users voted with their downloads. Altman has been in damage control trying to justify the deal since.
Meanwhile, Anthropic MD of International, Chris Ciauri, said it will hire a team in Sydney, and deepen it engagement with Australian institutions, as well as collaborate on projects that advance Australia’s national interests and priority sectors.
“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,” he said.
Anthropic counts Canva, Quantium, and CommBank among is customers and says its initial focus will be supporting its enterprise, startup, and research customers.
Australia and New Zealand rank 4th and 8th globally in Claude.ai usage, relative to population, according to our latest Economic Index.
The business said it’s also exploring adding local compute capacity through our third-party partners in Australia, using infrastructure already in place.
