Singapore – Anthropic has opened its fifth office in the Asia-Pacific region in Singapore and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Singapore Ministry of Digital Development and Information.
The agreement sets out cooperation on AI safety, security and model evaluation, according to the company. It also covers research on AI adoption and its impact, as well as responsible adoption across the public and private sectors.
Explaining the decision to open a local team, Dale Finlay, General Manager of ASEAN at Anthropic, said, “We’re committed 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.”
The opening follows an announcement made in September, when Anthropic said it would open a Singapore office in October, adding to its existing offices in Tokyo, Bengaluru, Seoul and Sydney. The company also appointed Finlay as General Manager for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), based in Singapore, to work with customers and partners across the region.
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.
Under the agreement, Anthropic plans to hold technical exchanges with Singapore’s AI safety, security and assurance institutions. These will focus on model evaluation, testing standards and incident response.
The company said it carries out similar work with safety institutes around the world. According to Anthropic, such exchanges give governments a clearer view of frontier AI capabilities and risks, while helping developers build safer models.
Anthropic also plans to share research and data with the government, including from the Anthropic Economic Index. In addition, it intends to offer technical and policy expertise as Singapore develops its rules for AI.
Beyond that, the company will look at ways to strengthen AI skills in Singapore and help small and medium-sized businesses adopt AI responsibly. It will also support the government’s goal of building AI capability among public officers.
Commenting on the partnership, Mann said, “Singapore has been a leader in responsible AI, with a long track record of investment in model testing and evaluation. 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.”
Chng also addressed the agreement, saying, “Singapore’s approach to AI has always been to enable innovation while keeping pace with its evolving risks. 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.”
The MOU builds on earlier collaboration between the two sides. Anthropic joined the Generative AI Evaluation Sandbox, run by the Infocomm Media Development Authority and the AI Verify Foundation, in 2023.
It later partnered with the same bodies on a red-teaming project in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.
Usage figures from Anthropic’s latest Economic Index point to heavy local uptake. Singapore ranks second of 121 countries in Claude.ai usage relative to its population, at nearly six times what its size alone would predict, the company said.
In the public sector, more than 1,500 engineers and technical staff at the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech Singapore) have adopted Claude Code, according to Anthropic. The company said the tool is being used to modernise government systems and speed up software delivery.
Meanwhile, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore is exploring how Claude could help strengthen the country’s cyber defence.
In financial services, DBS, which Anthropic describes as Southeast Asia’s largest bank, uses Claude for software development and day-to-day productivity in its Singapore operations. Anthropic said these applications run within the bank’s security and governance framework.
Separately, sovereign wealth fund GIC is rolling out Claude across its investment and corporate services teams. Anthropic added that organisations in regulated sectors, such as financial services, can now run Claude with in-region inference on Amazon Bedrock to meet strict data processing requirements.
Technology companies are also building on the model. Grab uses Claude to power BriX, its sales assistant, which Anthropic says saves the company’s sales teams approximately 40,000 hours every quarter and surfaces new sales opportunities.
Sea, the business behind Shopee, Garena, and Monee, works with Claude to help Shopee’s customer service chatbot respond faster and more accurately, according to Anthropic. Thousands of its employees also write and debug code with the model, while developer platform Supabase is building with Claude Code.
Anthropic said senior leaders are in Singapore this week to open the office and meet customers, developers and policymakers. The company hosted more than 300 developers at an event on 14 October, and its local community ambassadors held a meetup for more than 700 builders earlier in the week.
