Anthropic opens in Milan: 'Our technology empowers even small businesses'
Chris Ciauri, Managing Director International of the American company, explains to Il Sole 24 Ore why they feel they are a Big Tech of Ai unlike any other
Anthropic chooses Milan. The American company founded by former OpenAI researchers and become one of the main players in the global race for artificial intelligence will open its sixth European office in the Lombard capital after London, Dublin, Paris, Zurich and Munich. This move comes at a time when Italia is trying to carve out a role for itself in the debate on so-called frontier AI, the artificial intelligence of the great generative models such as Claude.
The choice of Milan is no coincidence. Anthropic aims to build a local presidium working with Italian companies, developers and institutions to accelerate the adoption of 'responsible' artificial intelligence. The team will be led by Thomas Remy, Head of Southern Europe, and will work with companies that are already customers of the Claude platform, including Generali, Unipol, Enel, Pirelli, Angelini Pharma and Bracco. 'The reason we came to a place like Milan,' Chris Ciauri, Managing Director International of Anthropic, explained to Il Sole 24 Ore, 'is because we have an ecosystem of partners who are developing new skills. I sat down with the C-level executives of Unipol just this morning, and they are thrilled that we are here. Having direct contact with the product creators will accelerate their learning and their journey with us".
Italia is described by the company as an interesting industrial laboratory for experimenting with these tools. Anthropic, in its note, cites the case of Satispay, which is said to have condensed an 18-month technical roadmap into seven thanks to the use of Claude in its engineering team, or Bending Spoons, where much of the software code is now said to be co-developed with the AI assistant Claude Code. A partnership with Jakala, a European data and AI company, has also been set up to extend the use of Claude to over 3,000 employees. According to the company, this would free up up to 70 per cent of senior management time for activities considered to be of greater strategic value.
The challenge, however, at least in Italia, will mainly be played on SMEs. 'Small companies,' he added, 'probably do not have in-house analysts and tend to outsource functions such as finance and legal. Tools like this can be real game changers for the productivity of companies of that size because we have an ecosystem of partners who are developing new skills. I really believe that technology has the ability to empower a small company probably even more than a large company, in terms of the exponential impact it can generate'.
The announcement comes a few days after the publication of 'Magnifica Humanitas', Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical also dedicated to artificial intelligence. Also present at the presentation of the papal document was Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic and one of the most influential researchers in the field of neural networks, who spoke of the need to involve governments, universities, civil society and religious communities in the development of AI. A symbolic signal.
