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(Reuters) -Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup backed by Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com, said on Tuesday it will open its first office in India next year, aiming to tap into the country's growing appetite for AI tools. The move comes as AI adoption in India accelerates, fueled by rising enterprise tech spending, a growing pool of skilled talent, and increasing investor interest. India, home to nearly a billion internet users, is becoming a major battleground for global AI players. The Asian country has emerged as Anthropic's second-largest consumer market for its chatbot Claude, which competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT and is noted for its strong coding capabilities. Anthropic currently offers both free and paid tiers of Claude in India but has not yet introduced local currency pricing. Co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is scheduled to visit India this week to meet with public officials and corporate partners, the $183 billion company said. The new office will be located in Bengaluru, widely recognized as the technology hub of India, and operations will start early 2026, Anthropic said. The location would serve as its second office in the Asia Pacific region after Tokyo, it added. OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, was formally registered as a legal entity in India in 2025 and plans to open its first India office in New Delhi later this year. OpenAI and Anthropic face strong competition in India from rivals such as Google's Gemini and AI startup Perplexity, both of which have launched offerings that make their advanced plans free for many users in the market. Last month, Anthropic announced plans to triple its international workforce to meet a surge in demand for its Claude AI models outside the United States. (Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona, Janane Venkatraman and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

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(Reuters) -Elon Musk's xAI is raising more financing than initially planned, including an equity investment from Nvidia, to bring its ongoing funding round to $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The financing, which includes equity and debt, will be tied to the Nvidia graphics processing units that xAI plans to use in Colossus 2, according to Bloomberg. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

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By Milana Vinn (Reuters) -Confluent is exploring a sale after attracting acquisition interest, according to three people familiar with the matter, the latest data infrastructure company to draw suitors for its potential in supporting artificial intelligence development. The software provider is working with an investment bank on the sale process, which is in its early stages and was instigated after both private equity firms and other technology companies expressed their interest to the company in buying it, the sources said. The company has a market capitalization of approximately $7 billion, but its stock is trading around 26% lower year-to-date. Some of the sources noted while Confluent's technology is highly sought-after, it became vulnerable to takeover approaches when its stock price dived in July, when it reported losing business from a large customer. The sources cautioned that no deal is guaranteed and Confluent could ultimately remain independent. They also spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are confidential. Confluent did not immediately respond to a comment request. Mountain View, California-based Confluent provides technology needed to manage massive, real-time data streams for artificial intelligence models. The company was founded by the original creators of Apache Kafka, a popular open-source technology that helps companies process huge torrents of data in real time, from bank transactions to website clicks. Confluent commercializes Kafka, providing enterprise-grade features, services, and support to major corporations worldwide. The interest in Confluent highlights a surge in demand for data infrastructure companies, fueled by the corporate race to develop generative artificial intelligence. In May, Salesforce agreed to acquire software maker Informatica for approximately $8 billion to bolster its AI capabilities by integrating Informatica's data management, integration, and governance tools into the Salesforce platform. (Reporting by Milana Vinn in New York; Editing by David French and Christopher Cushing)

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By Renju Jose SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had raised the recent deadly outage of Singtel-owned Optus's emergency call number with his Singaporean counterpart, Lawrence Wong, in a bilateral meeting held in Canberra on Wednesday. Two back-to-back outages of the emergency "000" number last month have intensified scrutiny of Optus, Australia's second largest telecom operator. The outages occurred less than a fortnight apart and affected thousands, with the first glitch linked to four deaths because customers were unable to get timely aid. "I raised the issue and we had a discussion. I thank Prime Minister Wong for the condolences he offered to the families and his support for strong follow-up action," Albanese said at a joint press conference after the meeting. Wong said he expected Optus and Singapore Telecommunications, majority owned by Singapore's state-run Temasek Holdings, to act responsibly, comply fully with Australian laws and cooperate with the ongoing inquiry. "I understand fully the anger, frustration and outrage at what has happened because if this were to have happened in Singapore, I would feel the same. So from that point of view, we understand the sentiments," Wong said. Singtel boss Yuen Kuan Moon met with Australian authorities last week, amid calls from some analysts and lawmakers for Optus CEO Stephen Rue to resign and Optus to be stripped of its operating licence. Albanese and Wong also entered into an agreement that they said would deepen the defence ties between the two countries. "We will enhance our respective militaries' reciprocal access to defence facilities in Australia and Singapore," a joint statement released after the meeting said. "This will include expanded access for the Australian Defence Force in Singapore in support of its regional presence and increased access for the Singapore Armed Forces to training areas in Australia." Both nations will also broaden cooperation in trade and investment to support their commercial interests in each other's economies, the statement said. (Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Tom Hogue and Lincoln Feast.)

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(Reuters) -Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup backed by Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com, said on Tuesday it will open its first office in India next year, as it looks to tap into the country's growing appetite for AI tools. India has emerged as Anthropic's second-largest market for the consumer use of Claude, its large language model that competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT. Claude has carved out a niche by demonstrating strong capabilities in coding, setting it apart in the crowded AI landscape. The $183 billion company said its co-founder and CEO, Dario Amodei, will visit India this week to meet public officials and corporate partners. The new office would be located in Bengaluru, widely recognized as a technology hub of India, and would begin operations early 2026, the company said. The location would serve as its second office in Asia Pacific region after Tokyo, it added. OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, formally registered as a legal entity in India in August and has begun building a local team. It plans to open its first India office in New Delhi later in 2025. The company faces strong competition in India from rivals like Google's Gemini and AI startup Perplexity, both of which have launched offerings that make their advanced plans free for many users in the market. (Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Janane Venkatraman)

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(Reuters) -Elon Musk's AI startup xAI is raising more financing than initially planned, including an equity investment from Nvidia, to bring its ongoing funding round to $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Nvidia is investing as much as $2 billion in the equity portion of the deal, Bloomberg reported, adding that the financing, which includes equity and debt, will be tied to the Nvidia graphics processing units that xAI plans to use in its data center Colossus 2. XAI's financing would be split between about $7.5 billion of equity and as much as $12.5 billion of debt, and is structured through a special purpose vehicle that will be used to buy Nvidia processors, the report said. Nvidia declined to comment, while xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In September, Elon Musk denied a CNBC report that said xAI was raising $10 billion at a post-money valuation of $200 billion. Musk added that "xAI will of course raise capital in the coming months, just not right now." Musk launched xAI in July 2023 as an alternative to OpenAI's ChatGPT. (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

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(Reuters) -Anthropic, the artificial intelligence firm backed by Google-parent Alphabet and Amazon.com, said on Tuesday that it would open an office in Bengaluru, India, in early 2026. (Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

(Reuters) -Anthropic, the artificial intelligence firm backed by Google-parent Alphabet and Amazon.com, said on Tuesday that it would open an office in Bengaluru, India, in early 2026. (Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

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By AJ Vicens (Reuters) -Qilin, a ransomware group with a track record of cyberattacks on major entities around the world, claimed responsibility on Tuesday for a hack on Japan's Asahi Group Holdings that disrupted production at the beer and beverage giant. Asahi Group's beer-making subsidiary, Asahi Breweries, said on Monday it had restarted production at its six Japanese beer plants on October 2. It first said it had been hacked on September 29. Qilin, which operates a ransomware-as-a-service platform that allows users to carry out attacks in exchange for a percentage of extortion proceeds, posted 29 images to its website on Tuesday of what the group claims to be internal Asahi Group documents.  The group claims to have stolen more than 9,300 files, or roughly 27 gigabytes of data, according to the entry on its website. Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the documents.  An Asahi Group Holdings spokesperson said in an email late Tuesday that the matter was still under investigation and the company declined to comment on Qilin's claims, or any details about extortion demands or negotiations.  Qilin did not respond to a request for comment. Qilin has been a prolific ransomware service since first emerging in 2022 with 870 claimed attacks, according to data compiled by , a cybercrime research platform. The group was behind the June 2024 hack of British diagnostic services provider Synnovis, which officials said in June 2025 contributed to the death of a London hospital patient. (Reporting by AJ Vicens in Detroit; Additional reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington and James Pearson in London; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Jamie Freed)

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SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday that he had raised the recent deadly outage at Singapore Telecommunications-owned Optus with his Singaporean counterpart, Lawrence Wong. After meeting Albanese in Australia's capital Canberra, Wong said he expected Singtel and Optus to "behave responsibly" and comply with domestic laws, adding both companies will fully support the ongoing inquiry into the outage. Four deaths have been linked to an outage last month in Australia after emergency calls were disrupted. (Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Tom Hogue)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)