Indian IT firm HCLTech struck an agreement with Anthropic to establish a separate business unit designed to accelerate enterprise adoption of agentic AI, with a focus on safety, cybersecurity and governance.

HCLTech stated its services team will build industry solutions and offerings powered by Anthropic’s Claude, Cowork and Claude Code, while its HCLSoftware business unit will embed these capabilities into select enterprise products.

The company will further establish a dedicated “Anthropic Business Unit and Centre of Excellence” to accelerate use of Claude in enterprise environments, providing secure sandbox environments to enable development.

Clients will also be aided by the partnership with the adoption of AI-native engineering practices, training workforces and building organisational capabilities to operate agentic AI safety at scale.

As what is known as an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partner, HCLSoftware will be given access to advanced models. It cited select products across cybersecurity, automation, business process application and application development as services that will benefit from advanced Claude capabilities.

Claude will also be used across IT support and for digital employee services, workflows supported by policy guardrails, exception handling and human oversight for high-impact changes.

CEO and managing director at HCLTech, C Vijayakumar, said few technology companies can combine the scale of a global systems integrator with the product depth of an ISV.

“That gives us a rare advantage to securely engineer and deploy Agentic AI at scale and deliver the business outcomes that matter most to our clients.”

HCLTech’s deal with Anthropic follows an agreement worth $1.1 billion in July with a major unnamed European company to deploy AI services and boost enterprise services for the business.

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Telia Company outlined plans to cut approximately 900 jobs across the group and lower its operating cost base, setting a target of achieving annual gross savings amounting to SEK1 billion ($100 million).

The company stated its moves represent the next step in becoming simpler, faster and more efficient, with an intention to localise its operations further “and strengthen the role of its country units in meeting evolving customer needs”.

As part of the shake-up, it will transfer approximately 220 positions primarily from its common Technology unit to country units. The 900-headcount reduction will hit all units, covering both employees and resource consultations.

The restructure is expected to be completed by 31 December, subject to customary union negotiations and will result in charges of SEK600 million in Q4 206, with cash flow effect mainly in 2027.

Finland will be the most impacted by the staff cuts, with 280 reductions, followed by home market Sweden with 260.

Patrik Hofbauer, CEO and president at Telia (pictured), said the plan was part of building the future Telia and further localisation “means doubling down on what we know gets results”.

“We must always become even simpler, faster and more efficient in everything we do.​ We want to empower our countries more, get the utmost from our common Technology unit and other Group Functions, and sharpen Telia’s edge in a very competitive market,” he added.

As of 1 October, the company had a total 14,100 employees.

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SoftBank Group founder and CEO Masayoshi Son (pictured) is reportedly targeting up to $100 billion in funding to scale up the company’s AI ambitions, with a number of investors in the Gulf in line to strike partnerships.

The Financial Times (FT) reported Son has been in discussions with senior figures across the Middle East including in the UAE over possible fundraising, although the outlet added there is no guarantee talks with the investors will amount to anything.

It also did not name any companies or specific individual investors.

FT sources claim Son is looking to use the cash to set up a fund to buy companies and then use AI and other advanced technology to improve operations.

SoftBank’s AI and robotics business Roze is expected to play a key role in the process should it come to fruition, with the company planning to take the unit public.

Raising $100 billion to fuel its AI ambitions adds to a $65 billion bet SoftBank has made on OpenAI.

There is also notably a drive across the Gulf nations to invest in the AI sector and diversify economies into technology-related fields, with UAE-based G42 and MGX pumping big sums of cash into development.

Son has a history of courting Gulf investors, with UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund partnering with the Japanese company on its original Vision Fund in 2017.

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