Cognition sets up APAC hub in Singapore

Richard Spence, Vice President and General Manager, APAC, will be responsible for driving the company’s regional strategy, customer engagement, and market expansion.

Following the expansion into Japan earlier this month, Cognition has now announced its expansion into Singapore with the country positioned as its APAC hub and a central base for regional leadership, operations and growth.

The expansion into Singapore follows the acquisition of Havana, a local startup building AI agents, as part of its strategy to build local engineering and go-to-market capabilities in the region. Havana’s team will be integrated into Cognition’s regional operations across engineering, go-to-market, and product development.

Richard Spence, Vice President and General Manager, APAC, will be responsible for driving the company’s regional strategy, customer engagement, and market expansion. With Asian enterprises continue to develop and deploy AI, the leadership team in Singapore will focus on growing the market in the region as well with Australia, India and South Korea part of the growth plans.

According to Spence, Singapore stands out as one of the most advanced markets globally for AI adoption, with strong national leadership and a highly engaged developer and user base.

“Local initiatives such as the National AI Council and the widespread use of AI tools reflect how quickly AI is being embraced. By establishing our APAC hub here, we are able to work closely with our customers across the region as they navigate a fundamental shift in how software is built and operated,” he said.

With plans to open an office later this year, Spence also shared that Cognition is looking to build a focused team in Singapore over the next two years across key roles in engineering, operations, product, sales, and marketing, supporting customers across the APAC region.

Known for Devin, the first AI software engineer designed to work alongside human developers to autonomously complete complex engineering tasks, Cognition’s platform enables organizations to accelerate development timelines, improve code quality, and automate routine workflows while maintaining strong controls around compliance, security, and human oversight.

Customers in Singapore currently include OCBC, where engineers are using its platform to support software development workflows.

“OCBC is proudly Singapore’s longest-established bank and with this strategic partnership with Cognition, further reinforces our position as the most forward-looking and a thought leader in responsible, enterprise-grade AI adoption. While our investment in Cognition’s platform began within engineering, it has quickly delivered meaningful benefits across multiple parts of our organization, including our business teams,” Michael Chung, Head of Group Wealth Engineering at OCBC said.

Chung also pointed out that OCBC has seen initial productivity gains of up to 30%, empowering them to deliver superior products to customers.

“Given our progress so far and the competitive advantage we’ve achieved, we are confident that leveraging Devin and Windsurf will enable us to accelerate transformation at scale and continue creating lasting value for both our shareholders and customers,” he added.