Anthropic is set to open an office in Milan, boosting its efforts in Italy following a repositioning spearheaded by the Vatican.

      EMEA has emerged as Anthropic's fastest-growing area, with run-rate revenue increasing by approximately 9 times and the number of large business accounts rising by over 10 times year-on-year.

      The Milan office represents the implementation of the company's strategy for Italy, which has been politically nurtured through activities in Rome. Anthropic plans to open a Milan office to solidify its growing commercial presence in Italy. This launch builds upon the company’s European expansion that began six months ago with the openings in Paris and Munich, adding Italy as the newest market in a region that is now the AI lab's most rapidly developing area.

      According to Anthropic’s own materials, EMEA is framed as the region experiencing the fastest growth within the company. The run-rate revenue in EMEA has more than quadrupled in the past year, and the number of large business accounts has increased more than tenfold. At that time, Italy was not included on the office list, but the announcement regarding Milan on Thursday addresses that omission, confirming the Southern European hub previously indicated during Mobile World Live's coverage of the EMEA expansion.

      The Milan launch aligns with a political and symbolic strategy being pursued alongside initiatives in Rome. Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, is expected to appear with Pope Leo XIV during the presentation of the encyclical ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ on May 25, a document presented by the Vatican as the Church's initial significant teaching on AI ethics. Following that, CEO Dario Amodei is anticipated to visit Rome for discussions with Italian institutional leaders.

      It seems Anthropic may have selected the Vatican as a platform for soft power, especially after the Trump administration's February classification of the company as a 'supply chain risk,' which led to its inclusion on the Pentagon's blacklist. Anthropic's European corporate presence now includes London, Dublin, Zurich, Paris, Munich, and Milan, with Liam Booth-Smith, a former British MP and ex-chief of staff to Rishi Sunak, heading the regional initiatives.

      Thomas Remy, Head of EMEA South, supervises operations in France, Italy, Iberia, the Middle East, and Africa from the Paris office. The leadership team's political rather than solely commercial composition signals how Anthropic is approaching European expansion in light of both the domestic policies of the Trump administration and the EU's AI governance trajectory.

      On the commercial front, the Milan opening coincides with Anthropic's rapid deployment of enterprise products. Claude Opus 4.7 was launched earlier this month; the company has also expanded its partnership with PwC and formed a multi-year deal with Accenture for enterprise AI implementation, which serve as the operational framework for the type of Italian business that a local office is designed to attract.

      Anthropic is targeting Italian enterprises in sectors such as financial services, industrials, and consumer goods, with the existing Paris-based EMEA South team managing initial accounts while local hires are anticipated in Milan. According to materials presented by its EMEA team over the past six months, Anthropic asserts that Italian enterprises can utilize locally-managed compliance and governance structures without having to choose between European-built tools and US frontier-model intelligence when deploying Claude.

      No specific information was released by Anthropic regarding the target headcount for the Milan office, the designated country lead for Italy, the timeline for the opening, or the Italian enterprise customers already engaged. The encyclical event at the Vatican on May 25, followed by Amodei's trip to Rome and the official launch of the Milan office, all occur within a single week of signaling to the Italian market. The next significant indicator will be the announcement of the first named Italian enterprise customer under the Milan team, alongside considerations of how Anthropic's Mythos-side cyber-research disclosure framework will function within European regulatory environments, which have begun to adjust their own AI governance tools based on the company’s published safety positions.