Anthropic opens Singapore office & signs AI safety pact

Anthropic has opened an office in Singapore and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Digital Development and Information. The new site is the company's fifth office in Asia-Pacific.

The agreement covers cooperation on AI safety, security and model evaluation, as well as research into AI adoption, its effects, and the responsible use of AI across public- and private-sector organisations.

The move deepens Anthropic's presence in one of its busiest markets. Its Claude AI models are already used by government and business organisations in the city-state, including GovTech Singapore, Grab and DBS.

Anthropic also pointed to its latest Economic Index, which ranked Singapore second out of 121 countries for Claude.ai usage relative to population. It said usage in Singapore is almost six times higher than population size alone would suggest.

Dale Finlay, General Manager of ASEAN at Anthropic, said the local office would help the company work more closely with customers in the market.

"We're committed to Singapore for the long term," Finlay said.

"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 organisations putting Claude to work on their hardest problems."

Government ties

The MOU was signed by Chng Kai Fong, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Digital Development and Information, and Benjamin Mann, Co-Founder of Anthropic. Josephine Teo, Minister for Digital Development and Information, and Michael Sellitto, Head of APAC Policy at Anthropic, witnessed the signing.

Anthropic's work with 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. It later worked with the same institutions on a red-teaming project conducted in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.

Under the new agreement, Anthropic plans to carry out technical exchanges with Singapore institutions involved in AI safety, security and assurance. Those exchanges are expected to focus on model evaluation, testing standards and incident response.

Mann linked the deal to Singapore's existing AI policy approach.

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

"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 said the government sees trust as central to broader AI adoption by companies, workers and the public.

"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," Chng said.

"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."

Existing users

Anthropic described Singapore as an established market across government, finance and technology. In the public sector, more than 1,500 engineers and technical staff at GovTech Singapore have adopted Claude Code for software work tied to government systems and digital services.

According to Anthropic, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore is also exploring how Claude could support cyber defence work.

In financial services, DBS uses Claude in its Singapore operations for software development and everyday productivity tasks. GIC is also rolling out the tool across investment and corporate services teams.

Organisations in regulated sectors can run Claude with in-region inference in Singapore on Amazon Bedrock, which Anthropic said helps businesses meet data processing requirements.

Among private-sector users, Grab uses Claude in BriX, a sales assistant tool that saves its sales teams about 40,000 hours each quarter, according to Anthropic. Sea is using Claude to support Shopee's customer service chatbot and help employees write and debug code. Supabase is also building with Claude Code.

Skills push

Beyond technical cooperation, Anthropic said it will explore ways to strengthen AI skills in Singapore, support small and medium-sized businesses adopting AI responsibly, and contribute to government efforts to build AI knowledge among public officers.

The company also plans to share research and data with the government, including material drawn from its Economic Index, and to provide technical and policy input as Singapore develops its approach to AI rules.

Anthropic's Singapore office is now open and hiring.