Anthropic hires Steve Jarrett from Orange for Europe

Anthropic Hires Steve Jarrett from Orange for Europe

The war for artificial intelligence is no longer fought solely in research labs or data centers, but now also within the IT departments of major corporations. Anthropic has just recruited Steve Jarrett, Chief AI Officer at Orange since 2019, signaling that the next phase of its development involves conquering large European enterprises.

The American executive will officially join the creator of Claude on August 25. Based in Paris, he will initially be tasked with adapting Anthropic's products for the European and African markets. This announcement comes just weeks after the opening of an office in Milan and as the company plans to triple its international workforce ahead of its IPO.

At Orange, Steve Jarrett not only oversaw artificial intelligence projects but also led a large-scale industrial transformation. In a message posted on LinkedIn, he noted that the group's Data and AI initiatives generated over €300 million in value by 2025, with a target of €600 million in annual gains by 2028. Even more telling, over 90% of the 130,000 employees in the group now use internal artificial intelligence tools.

These figures reflect a profound evolution in how AI is evaluated in large companies. After measuring the success of AI projects by the number of use cases tested or pilots launched, boards are now demanding financial indicators, measurable productivity gains, and documented returns on investment. Steve Jarrett is among the few European leaders capable of demonstrating this large-scale value creation.

His career also illustrates the transformation of the role of Chief AI Officer. His scope extended far beyond just language models; he led the Data & AI strategy, technology partnerships with OpenAI, Google, and Amazon, cloud migrations, digital sovereignty projects, and training programs.

The assessment he provides of his seven years at Orange is revealing both of his journey and the strategy of the telecom group. Thus, Orange claims to have developed the first voice models capable of accurately recognizing several African languages, including Wolof, Swahili, Bambara, and Lingala, to improve access to digital services. He also highlights the first European solution for sovereign agents 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, and a partnership with Coursera to train thousands of Africans for free in data and artificial intelligence professions.

Taken individually, each of these projects demonstrates an ability to innovate. Together, they primarily outline expertise in AI industrialization, and it is likely this accumulation of experiences that attracted Anthropic. The lab is not hiring a specialist in language models but a leader who knows how to deploy these technologies within an organization of over one hundred thousand employees, under significant regulatory and operational constraints.

The scope of his future mission confirms this interpretation. Steve Jarrett will be responsible for adapting Anthropic's products to the European and African markets. In a context where artificial intelligence models must now adapt to very different economic, cultural, and linguistic realities, this on-the-ground knowledge becomes a competitive advantage.

This appointment also illustrates the evolution of Anthropic's international strategy. For a long time, major American labs developed their models in the United States before marketing them from a few European offices. This logic is now reaching its limits; European companies expect more than just access to the most advanced models and demand guarantees regarding data governance, compliance with the European AI regulation, integration with their information systems, and risk management. Adapting a product to these requirements necessitates an intimate understanding of the expectations of large European accounts.

Steve Jarrett's continued presence in Paris reflects this desire for proximity. The French capital is gradually establishing itself as a hub for American labs. It concentrates both 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 AI deployments. Paris is no longer just a reservoir of engineers; it is becoming a decision-making center for the European strategies of American players.

Finally, this recruitment reveals a more subtle evolution in the talent war. For the past three years, the competition primarily focused on researchers in artificial intelligence, engineers specializing in foundational models, or experts in computing infrastructure. A new category of profiles is now becoming strategic: leaders capable of transforming promising technologies into measurable economic value. Chief AI Officers, data governance managers, and digital transformation architects are becoming the new targets for major labs.

For Anthropic, conquering Europe no longer solely depends on the quality of Claude, but also on its ability to understand the operational realities of European companies, a mission accepted by Steve Jarrett.