Anthropic opens Singapore office amid surging Claude adoption

Anthropic also signed an MoU with the Singapore government on the development of secure and responsible AI.

Anthropic has officially opened its new office in Singapore. The opening of the new office follows a wave of hiring in the country as the AI company looks to support one of its most active markets in the world.

The Singapore office, which is the fifth in the region, will focus on supporting organizations in their AI journey with safe, capable AI. Claude is already powering Singaporean business and government services including GovTech Singapore, Grab, and DBS.

For Dale Finlay, General Manager of ASEAN at Anthropic, the new Singapore office shows the company’s commitment to Singapore for the long term.

“Our customers here hold AI to an extremely high standard, especially when it comes to reliability and security. Having a team on the ground means we can get even closer to the organizations putting Claude to work on their hardest problems,” Finlay said.

According to Anthropic’s latest Economic Index, Singapore ranks second of 121 countries in Claude.ai usage relative to its population, at nearly six times what its size alone would predict. More than 1,500 engineers and technical staff at GovTech have adopted Claude Code to modernize government systems and speed up software delivery. The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore is also exploring how Claude could help strengthen the country’s cyber defense.

DBS Bank uses Claude across a range of use cases in its Singapore operations, including software development and day-to-day productivity, as part of its broader AI innovation efforts. Apart from that, GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, is rolling out Claude across its investment and corporate services teams.

In conjunction with the new office opening, Anthropic also signed an MoU with the Singapore government on the development of secure and responsible AI. The MoU sets out areas of cooperation in AI safety, security, and model evaluation; research on AI adoption and its impact; and responsible adoption across the public and private sectors.

Kai Fong Chng, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Digital Development and Information, and Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann signed the MOU on the sidelines of Singapore International Cyber Week. Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo and Michael Sellitto, Anthropic Head of APAC Policy, witnessed the signing.

“Singapore has been a leader in responsible AI, with a long track record of investment in model testing and evaluation,” said Mann.

“We founded Anthropic on the belief that capability and safety have to go hand in hand. With this MOU, we’ll partner with Singapore to help ensure the transition to powerful AI goes well here, across Asia-Pacific, and around the world,” he added.

Meanwhile, Chng stated that Singapore’s approach to AI has always been to enable innovation while keeping pace with its evolving risks. He added that trust is critical for businesses, workers, and the public to use AI with confidence.

“This partnership with Anthropic reflects the Government’s commitment to scaling up the responsible adoption of AI, deepening capabilities in our companies and government agencies, and delivering impact for Singapore,” Chng said.

Anthropic shared that under the MoU, it plans to hold technical exchanges with Singapore’s AI safety, security, and assurance institutions on model evaluation, testing standards, and incident response. Anthropic is already conducting similar work with safety institutes around the world, where sharing technical information provides governments with a clearer view of frontier AI capabilities and risks, while helping developers build safer models.

Senior leaders from Anthropic were in Singapore to open the office and meet with customers, developers, and policymakers. The company also hosted the Builder Summit Singapore, with more than 300 developers coming together with engineering and product leaders from Anthropic.