Anthropic has opened its fifth Asia-Pacific office in Singapore and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Singapore’s Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI), deepening ties with one of its most active markets anywhere in the world.

The MOU was signed by MDDI Permanent Secretary Chng Kai Fong and Anthropic co-founder Benjamin Mann on the sidelines of Singapore International Cyber Week, witnessed by Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo and Anthropic Head of APAC Policy Michael Sellitto. It sets out cooperation on AI safety, security and model evaluation, research into AI adoption, and responsible adoption across the public and private sectors.

Singapore ranks second globally in Claude usage

According to Anthropic’s latest Economic Index, Singapore ranks second out of 121 countries in Claude.ai usage relative to its population, at nearly six times what its size alone would predict. Claude already powers Singaporean business and government services used by millions of people daily, including those run by GovTech Singapore, Grab and DBS.

“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 organisations putting Claude to work on their hardest problems,” Dale Finlay, General Manager of ASEAN at Anthropic, said.

Government and enterprise adoption already under way

• More than 1,500 engineers and technical staff at the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech Singapore) have adopted Claude Code to modernise government systems and speed up software delivery
• The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore is exploring how Claude could help strengthen the country’s cyber defences
• DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, uses Claude across software development and day-to-day productivity within its security and governance framework, while GIC is rolling out Claude across its investment and corporate services teams
• Grab powers BriX, its sales assistant, with Claude, saving its sales teams approximately 40,000 hours every quarter
• Sea, the business behind Shopee, Garena and Monee, uses Claude for Shopee’s customer service chatbot and for code written and debugged by thousands of its employees

Organisations in regulated sectors such as financial services can now run Claude with in-region inference on Amazon Bedrock, helping them meet strict data processing requirements.

What the MOU covers

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, later partnering on a red-teaming project in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. Under the new MOU, the two sides plan technical exchanges on model evaluation, testing standards and incident response, alongside efforts to strengthen AI skills and help small and medium-sized businesses adopt AI responsibly.

“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,” Benjamin Mann, Co-Founder of Anthropic, said.

“Singapore’s approach to AI has always been to enable innovation while keeping pace with its evolving risks. 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 Kai Fong, Permanent Secretary of MDDI, said.

Growing a local presence

Anthropic hosted Builder Summit Singapore on the day of the announcement, bringing together more than 300 developers with its engineering and product leaders. Earlier in the week, Singapore’s Claude community ambassadors held a meetup for more than 700 local builders. The Singapore office is now open and hiring.