HCLTech Goes Big On Claude, Plans First AI Data Centre With Sarvam

HCLTech is expanding its advanced AI services business, which management expects to deliver higher margins than traditional services. The company will establish a dedicated business unit for Anthropic's Claude and build its first AI data centre in India as it seeks to drive growth and improve profitability.

HCLTech announced a global premier partnership with Anthropic alongside its September-quarter results. “We will establish a dedicated Anthropic business unit and a center of excellence to accelerate deployments of Claude in enterprise environments,” CEO and Managing Director C. Vijayakumar said on the earnings call.

HCLTech's software arm, HCLSoftware, will also become an Anthropic independent software vendor (ISV) partner, embedding Claude and Claude Code into select enterprise products with frontier safety guardrails.

Explaining how value would be shared between AI labs and services companies, Vijayakumar said Anthropic's pricing model would include token costs, making the arrangement less dependent on conventional, people-based billing.

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“We have a pricing which includes the token cost as well. So there, I think the equation will be a little bit not so much people-centric. It will be non-linear,” he told Abhishek Pathak of Motilal Oswal.

HCLTech also plans to establish an AI data centre in Bhubaneswar in partnership with Sarvam and the Odisha government. “It marks a significant step in building the infrastructure layer of our full-stack AI strategy,” Vijayakumar said.

HCLTech Margins In Focus

HCLTech reported $219 million in advanced AI revenue during the quarter, up 78% from a year earlier. This took the segment's annualised revenue run rate to $876 million.

Vijayakumar said advanced AI services offered higher margins than traditional services. The intellectual property and platform component could generate gross margins of more than 70%, while the services component could deliver margins at least 7% to 10% higher than traditional services.

“IP and platform component, the margins will be very high, very similar to a software business. So the gross margins will be upwards of 70%. For the services component, I think the margins will be at least 7% to 10% higher than traditional services,” he told Ravi Menon of Axis Capital.

He added that HCLTech had generally achieved better realisation and margins across its advanced AI deals.

Chief Financial Officer Shiv Walia said advanced AI services contributed 32 basis points to a 131-basis-point sequential expansion in earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margin, which stood at 18.2%. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.

Vijayakumar also said HCLTech could now charge customers directly for its platforms. “Many of the large deals that we've signed, we have specific line item for AI Force platform,” he said. AI Force is HCLTech's service transformation platform.

A quick look at how brokerages are reading the HCLTech Q2 performace
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On competition, Vijayakumar said the company's two largest advanced AI deals were single-sourced, primarily driven by its relationships with partners. “The two of the largest deals that we won were all single sourced, primarily driven by our relationship with our partners,” he said. Where competitors were involved in other deals, they were mostly boutique providers.

HCLTech Guidance Stays Cautious

Despite reporting the second-highest quarterly bookings in its history, HCLTech maintained its FY27 revenue growth guidance at 2.5% to 4%. It retained its services revenue growth guidance at 3% to 4% and its EBIT margin guidance at 17.5% to 18.5%.

Vijayakumar said the company was operating in a volatile environment and did not want to raise its guidance. “We are in a volatile world, and we do not want to increase our guidance and things like that,” he said. However, he added: “Services, definitely, we feel confident to be slightly above the midpoint.”

He also said a recently announced mega deal would not contribute revenue in the December or March quarters, with revenue expected to begin in the first quarter of the next financial year.

On talent, HCLTech is developing a centralised academy for forward-deployed engineers, who work directly with clients to take AI use cases into production. Training tracks will be aligned with OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, Google and NVIDIA.

The company has also opened an advanced semiconductor laboratory in Bengaluru, valued at ₹185 crore.

Vijayakumar said HCLTech would reinvest efficiency gains to strengthen its capabilities and differentiation rather than focus solely on margin optimisation. The company's desired margin band remains 18% to 19%.

“We would always want to invest to gain more capability and differentiation rather than optimize margins,” he said.

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