FILE PHOTO: Anthropic logo is seen in this illustration taken May 20, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
(Reuters) -Anthropic said on Friday it plans to triple its international workforce and expand its applied artificial intelligence team by fivefold this year to meet a surge in demand for its Claude AI models outside the United States.
Nearly 80% of consumer usage for Claude comes from outside the United States, with per-person usage in countries like South Korea, Australia and Singapore outpacing that of America, the company said.
Anthropic, valued at $183 billion and backed by Google-parent Alphabet and Amazon.com, has distinguished itself, in part, by building AI models that excel at coding.
Its Claude large language models are widely regarded as one of the most powerful frontier models on the market, and this has helped grow the company's global business customer base from under 1,000 to more than 300,000 in two years.
The company's run-rate revenue had grown to more than $5 billion by August from about $1 billion at the beginning of the year.
As international demand drives the company's momentum, Anthropic plans to hire for more than 100 new positions across Dublin, London and Zurich.
The company also plans to open its first Asian office in Tokyo, besides additional office locations in Europe.
The global expansion is led by Chris Ciauri, who recently joined as managing director of International following Paul Smith's appointment as chief commercial officer.
"The global demand for Claude is extraordinary—from financial services in London to manufacturing in Tokyo, enterprises are trusting Claude to power their mission-critical operations," Ciauri said.
Earlier this week, Microsoft signed a deal with Anthropic to integrate Claude models into its Copilot assistant, marking a shift for the generative AI chatbot that has primarily used OpenAI.
(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)
