Anthropic’s Milan office secures Generali, Pirelli, and Enel as its identified clients in Italy.

      The official launch of Anthropic’s sixth European office coincides with Pope Leo XIV’s AI encyclical, as the company unveils a lineup of Italian enterprise clients. Anthropic inaugurated its Milan office on Wednesday, marking its sixth location in Europe following London, Dublin, Paris, Zurich, and Munich.

      This opening finalizes the strategic expansion initially reported a week ago, while also presenting a notably specific list of Italian enterprise customers and a connection to Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas encyclical.

      The named customers lend substance to the announcement: Generali Group and Unipol Group serve as the primary players in Italian financial services, while Angelini Pharma and Bracco Group represent the life sciences sector. Enel Group stands out in the industrial-energy category, and Pirelli is the notable name in automotive. Three additional Italian tech firms complete the lineup: JAKALA, a Milan-based data-and-AI consultancy utilizing Claude across over 3,000 seats; Satispay, a financial super-app for over six million Italians, which has leveraged Claude to condense an 18-month development timeline to just seven months; and Bending Spoons, a Milan-based consumer-app company where many code revisions are now co-created with Claude Code.

      This customer roster spans the core of Italian industry in a way that many American AI labs have yet to achieve, with OpenAI lacking a Milan office. Google's presence in Italy mainly revolves around ad sales and Cloud teams. Mistral has been courting Italian clients through its new Industrial Engineering offering but has yet to disclose similar enterprise deployments as Anthropic has done.

      The Milan office opening is indicative of a strategy for Italy that has seemingly been in development for some time. The link to the Magnifica Humanitas encyclical adds a politically intriguing layer. Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah spoke at the Vatican presentation of the encyclical on May 25, advocating for broader participation from “religious traditions, civil society, academia, and governments” in fostering positive AI outcomes.

      The announcement of the Milan office, made just two days after the encyclical, suggests Anthropic is positioning itself as the leading AI lab willing to engage publicly with the Vatican's AI ethics framework, contrasting with the more defensive stance of other labs.

      The comparison to Mistral is unavoidable, as its CEO, Arthur Mensch, publicly opposed the encyclical’s call to “disarm AI,” asserting that Europe cannot afford to retreat from defense-AI initiatives while adversaries are advancing in that field. In contrast, Anthropic sent a co-founder to the Vatican and is explicitly connecting its Milan opening to the encyclical.

      The differing European approaches—one from a French sovereign-AI leader and the other from a US foundation-model lab—highlight the evolving landscape of European AI commerce.

      The growth trajectory underlying Anthropic’s European expansion is noteworthy, with the EMEA region being the company’s fastest-growing, characterized by a nearly 9-fold increase in run-rate revenue year-on-year and a 10-fold rise in large-business accounts. The Italian customer lineup released today aligns with this broader compounding trend, as Anthropic signs European enterprise commitments at a pace that significantly diversifies its revenue streams away from exclusive dependence on the US.

      Liam Booth-Smith, previously chief of staff to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, oversees the regional expansion from London, while Thomas Remy directs Southern Europe operations from Milan. However, the operational size of the Milan office on its first day remains uncertain, as Anthropic has not publicly provided details on headcount, office location, or hiring goals for this new site. Chris Ciauri, the company’s managing director for international operations, stated that the Milan office will enhance “Italian enterprise, Italian research, and Italian culture through a safe AI transition." This wording is both broad and intentionally vague, while the customer list serves as a more tangible indicator of their efforts.