Anthropic to open Sydney office in Australia, New Zealand

Anthropic is opening an office in Sydney as it expands across Australia and New Zealand, adding a fourth Asia-Pacific location alongside Tokyo, Bengaluru and Seoul.

The Sydney office is expected to open in the coming weeks. Anthropic plans to hire a local team, deepen engagement with Australian institutions, and collaborate on projects tied to Australia's national interests and priority sectors.

Anthropic's executive team will travel to Australia at the end of March for meetings with customers and policymakers, including discussions on planned partnerships.

Chris Ciauri, Managing Director of International at Anthropic, cited what he described as rapid AI adoption across key parts of the regional economy.

"We're excited by the ways organizations 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, Managing Director of International, Anthropic.

Ciauri said the decision to establish a local presence reflects the company's growing partnerships in Australia and New Zealand and its approach to building Claude models for different markets.

Customer Focus

The initial focus for the Sydney team will be enterprise, startup and research customers. Anthropic already works with organisations in Australia and New Zealand, including Canva, Quantium and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and with startups in areas such as agricultural technology, physical AI and climate technology.

The move adds another major AI developer to the list of global technology companies expanding their on-the-ground presence in Australia. Demand has grown as banks, professional services firms, software groups and public sector bodies evaluate generative AI for internal productivity, customer engagement and software development workflows.

Anthropic highlighted usage data for its Claude.ai service in Australia and New Zealand. Australia and New Zealand rank fourth and eighth globally in usage relative to population, according to its latest Economic Index.

It also reported strong use of Claude for computer and coding tasks, as well as educational instruction and research, and said it has begun building a local team and partnerships aligned with those patterns.

Local Infrastructure

Alongside the office opening, Anthropic is assessing options to expand compute capacity in Australia through third-party partners, using infrastructure already in place in the country.

Data residency requirements are driving those discussions, particularly among enterprises and government agencies. Many organisations in regulated industries seek assurances about where data is stored and processed when procuring AI services, and local computing infrastructure is often part of procurement standards.

Anthropic is also in early discussions about longer-term infrastructure in the region, but has not provided details on sites, investment levels or timelines.

The company framed its interest in Australia as consistent with its view that democracies should lead in AI development. It also pointed to the Australian government's ambition to make the country a destination for sustainable AI infrastructure.

The Sydney office will extend Anthropic's Asia-Pacific footprint, where it already has offices in Japan, India and South Korea. The expansion comes as AI vendors increase investment in sales, partnerships, policy engagement and technical support across the region, where demand varies by industry and regulatory environment.

Anthropic said it will share more details on longer-term infrastructure plans as they develop.