Anthropic names ex-Microsoft MD Irina Ghose to head India operations
NEW DELHI: Anthropic, one of the world’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) startups, on Friday appointed its first leader in India, appointing former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose to the post.
Ghose will serve as managing director of Anthropic India, concluding his 24-year tenure at Microsoft India, where he rose through the ranks to become chief operating officer, before being promoted to managing director in June 2023. He also managed Microsoft’s education and cloud sales businesses in the country. He joined Anthropic as competition among global AI firms intensified to gain an early foothold in the Indian market.
Ghose was Anthropic’s first executive hire in India. The move comes three months after founder and CEO Dario Amodei announced plans to open the company’s first India office in Bengaluru on October 7, and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi days later. Anthropic currently lists three mid-level job openings in India, all focused on AI sales roles.
Amodei is also expected to be the keynote speaker at the AI Impact Summit organized by the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) in New Delhi on February 18-19. In a statement announcing Ghose’s appointment, the company said India was its second largest market, echoing similar assessments made by rival OpenAI.
Founded in January 2021, Anthropic rose to prominence during the prolific AI boom that followed OpenAI’s ChatGPT going public in late 2022. The startup has raised $27.4 billion over the last five years. Reuters On January 7, it reported that the company had signed a term sheet to raise another $10 billion at a valuation of approximately $350 billion.
Anthropic’s backers include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Qatar Investment Authority.
Amodei, which left OpenAI in December 2020 due to disagreements with co-founder Sam Altman on the direction and management of artificial intelligence development, positioned Anthropic’s flagship model Claude as a security-first alternative in the field of core artificial intelligence.
Although Anthropic does not disclose official adoption figures for Claude, it lags behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini in terms of user base. Earlier this month, public database Thunderbit said Claude had nearly 30 million monthly active users worldwide as of December 31, 2025. By comparison, ChatGPT reported 800 million active users as of October 1 last year, while Gemini reported 650 million active users.
“India is interesting because of the scale of its technical talent. There is a deep alignment between the challenges India faces and our mission as a company – from using AI in different languages and contexts to creating frameworks for responsible governance,” Amodei said during his visit to India last year. “India’s AI ecosystem will play a central role in how AI evolves globally and democratically, and we look forward to working with organizations in India to pave the way for how useful AI can be scaled to serve everyone.”
