The American artificial intelligence laboratory draws on the expertise of the Orange manager to adapt its products to European and African markets.
Anthropic, the American laboratory behind the Claude artificial intelligence model, has just taken a new step in its expansion strategy on the Old Continent. The company has recruited Steve Jarrett, Orange’s director of artificial intelligence since 2019, to lead the adaptation of its products to European and African markets. The American leader will officially join the creator of Claude on August 25 and will be based in Paris.
Strategic recruitment for Europe and Africa
Steve Jarrett will initially be responsible for adapting Anthropic’s products to European and African markets. This mission takes place in a context where artificial intelligence models must respond to very diverse economic, cultural and linguistic realities. Knowledge of the field and the specific expectations of major European and African accounts thus becomes a decisive competitive advantage for international laboratories.
The announcement of this recruitment comes a few weeks after the opening in May 2026 of Anthropic’s sixth European office, in Milan, and as the company plans to triple its international workforce before its IPO. Anthropic thus confirms its desire to strengthen its presence on the European continent, relying on profiles capable of transforming promising technologies into measurable economic value.
At Orange, Steve Jarrett not only oversaw artificial intelligence projects, but led large-scale industrial transformation. The group’s Data and AI initiatives have generated more than 300 million euros of value in 2025, with a target of 600 million euros in annual gains by 2028. More than 90% of the group’s 130,000 employees now use internal artificial intelligence tools.
Steve Jarrett’s scope at Orange went well beyond language models alone. He managed the Data & AI strategy, technological partnerships with OpenAI, Google and Amazon, migrations to the cloud, digital sovereignty projects as well as training programs. Orange claims the development of the first voice models capable of accurately recognizing several African languages, notably Wolof, Swahili, Bambara or Lingala, in order to improve access to digital services. The operator also highlights the first European sovereign agent solution based on LangChain, the construction of a digital twin of the network with Amazon, a direct relationship with OpenAI, one of the largest data migrations from a telecom operator to Google Cloud Platform as well as a partnership with Coursera to train several thousand Africans for free in data and artificial intelligence professions.
Paris, new decision-making center for American AI
The choice of Paris to install Steve Jarrett is not trivial. The French capital is gradually establishing itself as an anchor point for American laboratories. It brings together leading research centers, a dense ecosystem of startups, large groups engaged in their digital transformation and a pool of leaders who have already led industrial deployments of AI. Paris is no longer just a reservoir of engineers and is becoming a decision-making center for the European strategies of American players.
For three years, the competition has mainly focused on researchers in artificial intelligence, engineers specializing in fundamental models or experts in computing infrastructures. A new category of profiles is now becoming strategic: leaders capable of transforming promising technologies into measurable economic value.
An evolution of Anthropic’s international strategy
For a long time, large American laboratories developed their models in the United States before marketing them from a few European offices. This logic is today reaching its limits: European companies expect more than simple access to the most efficient models, and demand guarantees on data governance, compliance with the European regulation on artificial intelligence, integration with their information systems and risk management.
For Anthropic, the conquest of Europe no longer depends only on the quality of Claude, but also on his ability to understand the operational realities of European companies, a mission now entrusted to Steve Jarrett.
