Breaking News:Anthropic names ex-Microsoft MD Irina Ghose to head India operations– What Just Happened

NEW DELHI: Anthropic, one of the world’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) startups, on Friday appointed its first leadership in India, naming former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose to the role.

Ghose will serve as managing director for Anthropic India, ending her 24-year tenure at Microsoft India, where she rose through the ranks to become chief operating officer before being promoted to managing director in June 2023. She also led Microsoft’s education and cloud sales businesses in the country. She joins Anthropic as competition among global AI firms intensifies to secure an early foothold in the Indian market.

Ghose is Anthropic’s first leadership hire in India. The move comes three months after founder and chief executive Dario Amodei announced plans to open the company’s first India office in Bengaluru on 7 October, and days later met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Anthropic currently lists three mid-level openings in India, all focused on AI sales roles.

Amodei is also expected to be a keynote speaker at the AI Impact Summit, hosted by the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) in New Delhi on 18-19 February. In a statement announcing Ghose’s appointment, the company said India is its second-largest market, echoing similar assessments made by rival OpenAI.

Founded in January 2021, Anthropic rose to prominence during the generative AI boom that followed the public launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. Over the past five years, the startup has raised $27.4 billion. Reuters reported on 7 January that the company has signed a term sheet to raise an additional $10 billion at a valuation of about $350 billion.

Anthropic’s backers include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and the Qatar Investment Authority, among others.

Amodei, who left OpenAI in December 2020 following differences with cofounder Sam Altman over the direction and governance of AI development, has positioned Anthropic’s flagship model, Claude, as a safety-first alternative in the foundational AI space.

While Anthropic has not disclosed official adoption figures for Claude, it trails OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini in terms of user base. Earlier this month, public database Thunderbit said that Claude had about 30 million monthly active users globally as of 31 December 2025. By comparison, ChatGPT reported 800 million active users as of 1 October last year, while Gemini reported 650 million.

“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,” Amodei had said during his India visit last year. “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.”