Anthropic is set to open an office in Singapore in October, marking its fifth in the Asia-Pacific region, adding to the artificial intelligence (AI) company’s offices in Tokyo, Bengaluru, Seoul and Sydney.
The new office will be at Raffles Place, it told The Straits Times.
In a statement on Sept 16, the company said the move was driven by strong enterprise demand for Claude, the company’s series of advanced large language models and AI assistants.
According to Anthropic’s most recent Economic Index, Singapore ranks second out of 121 countries in Claude.ai usage relative to population. The usage is 5.81 times higher than would be expected based on the size of its population.
Chris Ciauri, managing director of international at Anthropic, said that opening an office in Singapore is a “natural next step”.
“A presence here means we can hire the people who know this market best, and work side by side with local customers and partners building with Claude.”
Dale Finlay, the company’s general manager of ASEAN, will lead Anthropic’s operations in Singapore. He previously held leadership roles at technology companies across the Asia-Pacific region, including Google.
“From working with customers across South-east Asia, I’ve seen that ambition isn’t the blocker to AI adoption – trust is. Once that trust exists, the real work is embedding AI into how the business actually operates,” said Finlay.
Anthropic plans to work with organisations of every size in Singapore, ranging from start-ups and digital natives to large enterprises and the public sector.
The company said Singapore was chosen as it “brings together a high concentration of technical talent, global businesses, research institutions and a strong innovation ecosystem”.
It added that the Republic also has the same objective as Anthropic to strengthen the workforce with artificial intelligence while placing a strong emphasis on responsible adoption.
“That balance between innovation and safety aligns closely with Anthropic’s approach,” the company added.
Senior leaders from Anthropic will visit Singapore for the opening to meet customers, partners and policymakers.
The company is set to hire for a range of roles in the country.
Its careers page lists nine Singapore-based roles across applied AI, finance, marketing, sales and economic research, as at 10.30am on Sept 16.
The jobs listed are:
- Applied AI architect
- APAC tax lead
- Head of APAC accounting
- Senior payroll manager, APAC
- Field marketing manager, APAC
- Regional research economist
- Account executive, digital native businesses
- Account executive, public sector (ASEAN)
- Enterprise account executive, ASEAN industries generalists
Expansion amid regional AI push
Anthropic’s international expansion into Singapore follows similar moves made by the likes of OpenAI and Google DeepMind, which have set up laboratories here to support AI adoption within local industry and accelerate development of frontier AI models.
The company has Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC as one of its major financial backers.
This regional push comes as fears about the dangers of AI have dominated conversations worldwide. These concerns recently intensified after Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher, resigned and cautioned about AI’s threat to humanity.
In response to such risks, employees and even leaders of top AI companies have increasingly urged the adoption of AI guardrails.
On Sept 15, the world’s biggest AI companies – comprising Anthropic, OpenAI and Google – said they are working on creating a standards body to address these issues.
THE STRAITS TIMES
