Anthropic announced that it is expanding its Asia-Pacific operations by opening a new office in Singapore—its fifth in the region—and signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Singapore‘s Ministry of Digital Development and Information. The office opening and MOU signing took place around Singapore International Cyber Week, with the MOU signed by Permanent Secretary Kai Fong Chng and Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann, witnessed by Minister Josephine Teo and Michael Sellitto, Anthropic‘s Head of APAC Policy. The MOU outlines cooperation in AI safety, security, and model evaluation; research on AI adoption and its impact; and responsible adoption across the public and private sectors.

Anthropic describes Singapore as one of its most active markets globally, with Claude already powering Singaporean business and government services used by millions daily, including GovTech Singapore, Grab, and DBS. Dale Finlay, General Manager of ASEAN at Anthropic, said the company is committed to Singapore for the long term, and that having a local team will let Anthropic get closer to organizations using Claude on their hardest problems. Ben Mann noted Singapore‘s leadership in responsible AI and its investment in model testing and evaluation, and said the partnership will help ensure the transition to powerful AI goes well in Singapore, across Asia-Pacific, and worldwide. Chng said the partnership reflects the government’s commitment to scaling up responsible AI adoption, deepening capabilities in companies and government agencies, and delivering impact for Singapore.

Anthropic‘s work in Singapore dates back to 2023, when it joined the Generative AI Evaluation Sandbox run by the Infocomm Media Development Authority and the AI Verify Foundation, and later partnered on a red-teaming project in English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. Under the new MOU, Anthropic plans to hold technical exchanges with Singapore‘s AI safety, security, and assurance institutions on model evaluation, testing standards, and incident response. It also plans to strengthen AI skills in Singapore, help small and medium-sized businesses adopt AI responsibly, support the government’s goal of building AI capability among public officers, and share research and data with the government, including from the Anthropic Economic Index, as Singapore develops its rules for AI.

The article reports several concrete adoption figures. In the latest Economic Index, Singapore ranks second of 121 countries in Claude.ai usage relative to population, at nearly six times what its size alone would predict. In the public sector, more than 1,500 engineers and technical staff at GovTech Singapore have adopted Claude Code to modernize government systems and speed up software delivery, and the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore is exploring how Claude could help strengthen cyber defense. In financial services, DBS uses Claude across software development and day-to-day productivity within its security and governance framework, and GIC is rolling out Claude across its investment and corporate services teams. Organizations in regulated sectors can now run Claude with in-region inference on Amazon Bedrock.

Singapore‘s technology companies are also building with Claude. Grab’s sales assistant BriX, powered by Claude, saves Grab’s sales teams approximately 40,000 hours every quarter and surfaces new sales opportunities. Sea—the parent of Shopee, Garena, and Monee—works with Claude to help Shopee’s customer service chatbot respond faster and more accurately, and thousands of Sea employees use Claude for coding. Supabase, a developer platform with strong roots in Singapore, is building with Claude Code. The article also notes that Anthropic hosted Builder Summit Singapore for more than 300 developers, and that Singapore‘s Claude community ambassadors held a meetup for more than 700 local builders. The Singapore office is now open and hiring.