Glean expands in Australia as ANZ demand for AI grows

Glean has expanded into Australia by establishing a local entity and growing its team, with plans to nearly double local headcount this year.

The move signals a deeper commitment to Australia and New Zealand as the US software group looks to serve regional customers and partners more directly. Its ANZ customer base has grown by more than 60 per cent over the past year.

Glean sells artificial intelligence software for workplace search, assistants and agents. It says organisations in the region are moving from early AI experiments to broader deployment across their operations. That shift is driving demand for systems that can work across large application estates while meeting internal controls and data requirements.

Australian businesses have been among the faster adopters of cloud software in the Asia-Pacific region, but AI roll-outs have exposed a new set of operational challenges. Companies are trying to connect information held in separate systems, apply controls consistently, and respond to rising expectations around data sovereignty.

Those conditions have made Australia a priority market in Glean's international growth plans. It already works with regional customers including Optus, Canva, Xero and REA Group across technology, financial services, telecommunications and media.

Growth metrics

The Australia expansion comes as Glean scales rapidly worldwide. It passed USD $200 million in annual recurring revenue in December 2025, nine months after reaching USD $100 million, and has more than tripled its enterprise customer base over the past two years.

That trajectory reflects a broader shift in corporate AI spending. Many businesses that started with isolated pilot programmes are now looking to embed AI into day-to-day work, shifting attention from model access to governance, integration and permissioning.

Arvind Jain, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Glean, outlined the company's view of the opportunity in the region.

"We're expanding in Australia because the demand is real, and we believe this market will be one of the defining markets for enterprise AI globally. Organisations across Australia and New Zealand know what AI can deliver, and they're moving quickly to make it useful inside the enterprise. But they need more than access to models. They need AI grounded in their company's own context, connected across their existing systems, and built with security and governance at the core," said Arvind Jain, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Glean.

Regional demand

Glean argues that the next phase of enterprise AI adoption will depend less on headline model performance and more on whether tools can operate within existing corporate systems. In practice, that means software must draw on company data, respect user permissions and fit into established workflows.

That pitch appears to be resonating in ANZ, where large companies often run a mix of cloud software, internal databases and legacy platforms. For many buyers, the challenge is not whether AI can generate useful outputs, but whether it can do so safely and in a way staff can use in everyday work.

The local expansion is intended to help Glean work more closely with customers and partners on those issues. In ANZ, it works with ecosystem partners including AWS, Snowflake and Mantel.

Amar Maletira, Chief Operating Officer, Glean, said demand in the region reflects both appetite for AI and the complexity of deployment.

"We're seeing strong appetite across ANZ for AI that can work across the enterprise, not just within a single application or workflow. This is a market with high SaaS maturity, but also real complexity, from fragmented environments to rising expectations around trust and data sovereignty. Glean's context-aware Work AI platform is designed for that reality, bringing enterprise knowledge, permissions, and workflows together in a secure AI layer. With our growing local presence, we can work more closely with customers and partners as they turn AI from experimentation into scaled business impact," said Amar Maletira, Chief Operating Officer, Glean.

Product focus

Glean's offering includes an AI assistant for employees and tools for building and managing AI agents. Its software also connects with more than 100 other systems, a feature aimed at enterprises that want AI tools to access information across multiple applications rather than sit within a single vendor environment.

For the Australian market, the local entity and headcount increase suggest Glean sees enough demand to invest directly rather than serve customers remotely. Its comments indicate the region's AI spending will be shaped as much by practical concerns around deployment, oversight and access to company information as by interest in the underlying models.