Anthropic names ANZ comms lead as APAC expansion gathers pace

Claude maker Anthropic is stepping up its build-out across Asia Pacific, appointing former Meta and Deel executive Antonia Sanda to lead communications in Australia and New Zealand while recruiting for a regional marketing leader and a string of new roles in Sydney.

Sanda joins Anthropic after more than four years at HR technology platform Deel, where she built its APAC communications function. Before that, she spent more than eight years at Meta, including as head of communications for Australia and New Zealand.

“New gig! I’ve joined Anthropic to lead Communications for Australia and New Zealand,” Sanda said in a LinkedIn post.

“Just back from San Francisco, this week getting on the tools and finding my feet. There is so much to learn and I’m not yet across it all. What I have seen is that people are thoughtful and are asking the hard questions.

“Thanks to everyone who helped me get here. Please be patient with my inbox for a while!”

SEE MORE: Anthropic builds Singapore footprint with hiring push

At Deel, Sanda was responsible for building the company's communications function across APAC, establishing a network of boutique PR agencies across key markets and overseeing work spanning B2B and brand communications, policy and crisis communications.

But her arrival is only one piece of a considerably broader regional expansion underway at Anthropic.

The AI company is currently advertising nine additional roles in Sydney across applied AI, compute, legal, people, public policy, sales and software engineering infrastructure.

In Singapore, Anthropic is now looking for a founding APAC field marketing leader to build its regional marketing function from the ground up.

The job advertisement offers a revealing glimpse into Anthropic's ambitions in the region.

Rather than looking for a marketer to execute a global playbook, Anthropic wants someone who can “autonomously own a regional function end to end”, setting the strategy, building its operating system and representing marketing to both regional sales and global marketing leadership.

For at least the initial period, they will also be a marketing team of one.

“Regional expansion is planned but the timing isn't fixed,” the company says in the job description, meaning its first regional field marketing leader will need to be both senior enough to build the strategy and hands-on enough to write briefs, run roundtables and negotiate directly with agencies.

The role will also have considerable influence over where Anthropic places its bets across APAC and partner marketing is expected to play a particularly important role. Anthropic described partners as the “primary distribution mechanism” for field marketing in the region.

The remit spans executive roundtables, customer events, industry conferences, partner programs and account-based marketing, alongside responsibility for pipeline, attribution, ROI and the eventual recruitment of a wider APAC field marketing team.

The latest hiring builds on an expansion that has accelerated over the past several months.

Several roles have been on offer in Singapore to oversee regional corporate accounting operations as well as an economic research lead focused on measuring AI's impact on labour markets, productivity, inequality and economic outcomes.

The company was also establishing its first locally based product support team in Singapore to support users and enterprise customers across the region.

The growing regional footprint comes as the battle between the world's major AI companies increasingly shifts from model development into the infrastructure, enterprise relationships and local teams needed to turn rapidly growing adoption into durable businesses.

OpenAI has also been expanding aggressively in Singapore, committing more than SG$300 million to establish its first Applied AI Lab outside the US, with plans for more than 200 engineers and specialists.