Anthropic opens first Asia-Pacific office in Japan

Anthropic has opened its first Asia-Pacific office in Tokyo after announcing plans to invest in Japan. The company has seen Asia Pacific run rate revenue grow more than 10x in the past year. The company's large business accounts in the region, defined as customers that each represent over US$100,000 in run-rate revenue—has grown 8x in the past year.

“Technology and human progress are not in tension, but advance together,” said Dario Amodei CEO and co-founder, Anthropic. 

“This principle, this Japanese notion of the purpose of technology, is at the heart of Anthropic. It’s how we view the world, and it’s the reason we see Japan as a vital hub for growing our business.” 

Anthropic also signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Japan AI Safety Institute to collaborate on AI evaluation methodologies and to monitor emerging trends in the field, noting that international cooperation is needed on evaluation standards. 

"What we're seeing in Japan validates our belief that the most successful AI deployments enhance human capabilities rather than replace them," said Hidetoshi Tojo, Representative Director and President of Anthropic in Japan. 

"Japanese businesses understand that AI should allow people to focus on what humans do best—creative problem-solving, nuanced communication, and building trusted relationships."

At the time Tojo's appointment was announced in August, he observed that Japanese enterprises are rapidly embracing generative AI, integrating it into critical business operations, customer experiences, and development workflows. “At the same time, these companies are seeking safe, secure, and trustworthy AI—something that is at the very core of Anthropic's mission and will be highly valued by Japanese companies,” he said.

Japan ranks in the top 25% globally for AI adoption according to recent data from Anthropic’s Economic Index. People in Japan use AI as a collaborative tool to augment human capabilities, primarily for productivity-enhancing tasks like academic research, writing, and document editing.

Anthropic also hosted its first Builder Summit in Tokyo in late October, meeting over 150 startups and founders building with Claude. 

Rakuten is using Claude for autonomous coding projects, improving developer productivity, while document analysis at Nomura Research Institute now takes minutes instead of hours while maintaining precision. Panasonic has integrated Claude across both business operations and consumer applications, and Classmethod, a cloud integrator, has reported 10x productivity gains, with Claude Code generating 99% of a recent project's codebase. Claude Code is a command-line interface version of Claude.

A partnership with the Mori Art Museum has been extended as well, covering activities such as a collaboration on an upcoming exhibition, Roppongi Crossing 2025: What Passes Is Time. We Are Eternal. Anthropic previously worked with the museum on the MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art exhibition.

The company is now building a team in Tokyo to work alongside partners across industry, government, and culture to advance human progress. "Over the coming months, we'll bring this same approach to Seoul and Bengaluru as we continue our Asia-Pacific expansion. We look forward to helping innovation flourish across the region," Anthropic said.

The Korean government recently announced plans to become one of the world’s top three hubs of AI development, Anthropic noted, sharing that the Seoul office is expected to open in early 2026, after the Bengaluru office goes live.  

Anthropic further noted in late October that over a quarter of its Claude Code user base now comes from countries in Asia-Pacific, with the number of active weekly Claude Code users in Korea growing 6x in the past four months. In fact, a Korean software engineer is currently the world's top Claude Code user. 

Korean users are also among Claude's most active globally, ranking in the top five both in total usage and per capita usage according to the Economic Index. 

"Korea is at the forefront of AI innovation in Asia and we’ve already seen strong adoption of Claude in the region," said Amodei. 

"We built Claude to deliver both frontier capabilities and the safeguards needed for responsible deployment, and our local partnerships in Korea will help demonstrate what's possible when advanced AI meets Korea's world-class technical ecosystem and forward-thinking institutions.” 

Korea's Law&Company uses Claude to power their AI legal assistant, nearly doubling lawyer efficiency rates and doing so with the high level of accuracy required in legal work, Anthropic said, while Korea’s largest telecommunications company, SK Telecom, chose Claude to create a custom AI customer service model that’s become a blueprint for the telco industry. 

The combination of world-class tech companies, a thriving startup scene, and advanced frameworks for AI ethics and safety all contribute to "remarkable promise" in Korea’s innovation ecosystem, Anthropic said. 

“Korean businesses are already some of the world’s most sophisticated users of Claude, particularly for complex coding and enterprise applications,” said Paul Smith, Chief Commercial Officer of Anthropic. 

"Having a local presence means we can work more closely with these world-class enterprises and startups and give them the unique support they need.” 

Anthropic's focus in Korea will be closely aligned with Korea's national strategy to become a global AI leader. The company aims to work closely with Korean government agencies, research institutions, and industry partners to advance responsible AI development and deployment across key sectors. 

As with Japan, Anthropic will be building a local team focused on supporting the country's unique business landscape and technological needs. 

The Bengaluru office was announced in early October, and expected to go live in early 2026 as well. Bengaluru will serve as Anthropic's second office in Asia Pacific after Tokyo, and is expected to help the company serve India’s growing AI ecosystem. 

“India is compelling because of the scale of its technical talent and the commitment from the Indian government to ensure the benefits of artificial intelligence reach all areas of society, not just concentrated pockets,” said Amodei. 

“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. India's AI ecosystem will play a central role in how AI develops globally and democratically, and we’re looking forward to working with organisations in India to pave a path for how beneficial AI can be scaled in a way that serves everyone.” 

The focus in India will be deploying AI for social impact in sectors like education, healthcare, and agriculture, as well as supporting key industries through strategic partnerships with Indian enterprises, nonprofits, and startups, Anthropic said. 

The Economic Index Report notes that India ranks second globally in consumer usage of Claude, only behind the US. Anthropic also revealed that most of Claude usage in India is for technical and programming-related tasks, such as mobile user interface (UI) development and web app debugging. 

Large Indian enterprises like CRED rely on Claude for their most critical coding work. And considering the rapid global adoption of Claude Code—with usage growing over 10x in just the first three months after its May launch—Anthropic believes Claude has the potential to accelerate growth among India's export-focused IT services industry. 

“Our expansion comes at a pivotal moment when Indian enterprises and startups are seeking AI models they can trust,” said Smith.

“They need systems that combine frontier performance with the safety and reliability required to support critical business operations at the massive scale that they operate. We see remarkable promise in India’s innovation ecosystem – the vibrant startup and developer communities alongside Indian enterprises are building solutions that impact millions of lives globally.” 

Anthropic has been advancing Claude’s Indic language capabilities. Claude already supports major Indic languages, and will launch enhanced performance in Hindi and nearly a dozen additional languages, including Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, and Urdu, Anthropic said, anticipating that the extended linguistic capabilities will strengthen public sector adoption and enable broader access to AI across India. 

The Economic Index shows that nearly 80% of consumer Claude usage comes from outside the US, with per-capita usage in countries like South Korea, Australia, and Singapore outpacing that of the US. Singapore is among the highest countries in terms of usage per capita, at 4.6x what would be expected based on their population. On the other end of the spectrum, emerging economies such as Indonesia at 0.36x and India at 0.27x, use Claude less.