Anthropic hires Irina Ghose to lead India

Anthropic has appointed former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose as managing director for Anthropic India, marking the company’s first senior leadership hire in the country and a clearer push to scale in what it calls its second-largest market. This leadership move is also a timely signal for stakeholders tracking global AI expansion through the ai world organisation, the ai world summit, ai world summit 2025 / 2026, ai world organisation events, and ai conferences by ai world.

Anthropic’s first India leader

AI startup Anthropic has named Irina Ghose—previously Microsoft India’s managing director—as managing director for Anthropic India, making her the company’s first senior leader in the country. The appointment underlines Anthropic’s intent to deepen its India presence as global AI firms race to win customers, partners, and talent in a fast-growing market.

Ghose’s hire comes after Anthropic’s founder and CEO Dario Amodei publicly signaled plans to open the company’s first India office in Bengaluru in October, followed by high-level outreach during his India visit. Anthropic is also showing early hiring intent via a small set of India-based roles focused on sales, indicating a go-to-market buildout rather than a purely research-first setup at this stage.

Irina Ghose’s Microsoft track record

Ghose is ending a 24-year run at Microsoft India, where she moved up through leadership roles and served as chief operating officer before becoming managing director in June 2023. During her tenure, she also led major business lines including education and cloud sales, giving her experience across public-sector, enterprise, and ecosystem-led growth.

For Anthropic, this background matters because India expansion often requires navigating a mix of large enterprises, government-linked digital initiatives, and a developer community that expects strong enablement. In practical terms, Ghose’s profile suggests Anthropic is prioritizing execution in sales, partnerships, and adoption—especially important as foundational AI providers compete for early default choices in product stacks.

Why India is a key battleground

Anthropic has described India as its second-largest market, aligning with similar public positioning from rivals that see India as both a massive user base and a deep technical talent pool. Amodei has argued India is compelling due to scale, language diversity, and the need for responsible AI governance frameworks—areas where deployment choices can shape global norms.

Amodei is also expected to appear as a keynote speaker at the AI Impact Summit hosted by MeitY in New Delhi on 18–19 February, keeping Anthropic visible in policy and industry circles. For professionals following the ai world organisation, these policy-adjacent engagements are often leading indicators of where global model providers plan to invest next—especially ahead of the ai world summit and other ai world organisation events.

Funding, Claude, and the competitive landscape

Founded in January 2021, Anthropic grew rapidly during the generative AI wave that accelerated after ChatGPT’s public launch in late 2022. The company has raised $27.4 billion over the past five years, and Reuters reported in early January that Anthropic signed a term sheet to raise another $10 billion at an implied valuation of about $350 billion.

Anthropic’s backers include major names such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and the Qatar Investment Authority, highlighting how strategically important foundation-model capacity has become. Amodei—who left OpenAI in December 2020 after disagreements with Sam Altman over AI direction and governance—has positioned Anthropic’s flagship model Claude as a safety-first alternative in the foundation-model market.

On adoption, Anthropic has not released official Claude usage numbers, and it still trails leaders like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini by user base in most public comparisons. A public database, Thunderbit, estimated Claude at about 30 million monthly active users globally as of 31 December 2025, compared with figures reported for ChatGPT (800 million active users as of 1 October last year) and Gemini (650 million).