Anthropic, whose Claude chatbot is one of the main rivals to ChatGPT, is “doubling down on sustained Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) growth,” the company’s international director Chris Ciauri said in a statement.

Without giving detailed figures, Anthropic said it had multiplied annualised revenues in its EMEA division by nine over the past year and tripled its headcount in the region – with more new hires planned.

The company, which already has offices in Dublin, London and Zurich, highlighted contracts with major French firms like cosmetics maker L’Oreal and pharma heavyweight Sanofi.

Paris will host senior Anthropic executives for the region, including Thomas Remy, a veteran of Google’s Cloud arm.

Anthropic’s product chief and Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger told AFP in June that the company wanted to power new European startups and boost research and development, with 100 new hires planned in the region.

San Francisco-based Anthropic is valued at US$183 billion and serves 300,000 business clients worldwide.

Today’s announcement came after a wobble in European and US high-tech stocks this week, which analysts suggested was caused by concerns over the return on investment for generative AI.

Companies including OpenAI and Meta have allocated hundreds of billions of dollars in investments to develop and run the most advanced AI models in the coming years – far outstripping current revenues from the technology.

Yesterday, OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar retracted a suggestion that the US government should offer loan guarantees to backstop the towering investments needed for generative AI.