Anthropic hires Orange’s AI chief as its European build-out accelerates

Anthropic hired Steve Jarrett, Orange's chief AI officer, to lead its European and African expansion. Jarrett will join the Claude maker in Paris in late August to adapt products for those markets. The hire underscores Anthropic's push to triple its international workforce and target large enterprises like carriers.

Steve Jarrett, Orange’s chief AI officer since 2019, will join the Claude maker in Paris in late August to adapt its products for European and African markets. The head of artificial intelligence at the French telecoms group Orange is leaving to join Anthropic, a hire that lands squarely inside the US company’s push into Europe. Steve Jarrett, Orange’s chief AI officer since 2019, confirmed he had accepted a job at the maker of the Claude models, though he did not disclose his new title. Jarrett will start on 25 August and be based in Paris, according to a LinkedIn post, Reuters reported. His brief, at least to begin with, is to help Anthropic “better understand and adapt” its products to the needs of the European and African markets. After more than six years running AI for a European carrier, he arrives knowing the terrain Anthropic is trying to cover. Orange is not being left without a successor. The day before the move surfaced, the operator named Usman Javaid, currently chief product and marketing officer at its B2B arm Orange Business, as group chief AI officer, effective 1 September, TelecomTV reported. Javaid will report to group chief technology and innovation officer Bruno Zerbib, and brings a background spanning roles at Orange Business, Vodafone, and AWS across cloud, IoT, and network strategy. The succession, announced almost in lockstep with the departure, gives the comings and goings a tidiness that corporate transitions rarely manage. For Anthropic, the hire is one data point in a fast-moving expansion. The company opened its sixth European office, in Milan, last month, adding to a string of hubs that includes Paris and Munich. It has said it plans to triple its international workforce, and it is doing so while preparing to go public this year. The logic of poaching a telco’s AI lead is not subtle. Anthropic sells frontier models; carriers like Orange are among the large enterprises it most wants as customers and distribution partners, and they operate across exactly the European and African geographies Jarrett is being asked to map. Hiring the person who ran AI on the buyer’s side is a way of importing that perspective wholesale. The move also fits a broader pattern at the company, which has spent 2026 pulling senior talent from across the industry, including from OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and xAI. The Orange hire is smaller in profile than some of those, but more pointed: it is about a specific region and a specific kind of customer rather than raw research firepower. What Jarrett will actually be called, and how wide his remit runs, Anthropic has not said. For now the facts are narrow and confirmed: a European AI executive of some standing is changing sides, the company he is joining is expanding faster than it can open offices, and the continent he knows is the one it most wants to win. He starts in late August. Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.