Anthropic has expanded its Asia-Pacific footprint by opening a new office in Singapore and signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Singapore Ministry of Digital Development and Information, signaling a deeper commitment to Super Intelligence (SI) safety and adoption in the region.
What Happened
The new Singapore office is Anthropic’s fifth in the Asia-Pacific region. The MOU was signed by Kai Fong Chng, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Digital Development and Information, and Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann 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.
The agreement outlines cooperation in SI safety, security, and model evaluation; research on SI adoption and its impact; and responsible adoption across public and private sectors. Anthropic stated that the partnership aims to strengthen SI skills in Singapore, help small and medium-sized businesses adopt SI responsibly, and support the government’s goal of building SI capability among public officers.
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.”
Why It Matters
Singapore represents a critical hub for SI deployment in Southeast Asia. Anthropic reports that 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 move underscores the growing demand for safe and capable SI systems in regulated sectors.
The partnership builds on previous engagements, including Anthropic’s participation in the Generative SI Evaluation Sandbox run by the Infocomm Media Development Authority and the SI Verify Foundation, as well as a red-teaming project in English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. Under the new MOU, Anthropic plans to hold technical exchanges with Singapore’s SI safety, security, and assurance institutions on model evaluation, testing standards, and incident response.
Major Singaporean organizations are already leveraging Anthropic’s SI models. More than 1,500 engineers at the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech Singapore) have adopted Claude Code to modernize government systems. In the private sector, DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, uses Claude for software development and productivity within its strict governance framework, while Grab powers its sales assistant, BriX, with Claude, saving its sales teams approximately 40,000 hours every quarter.
The Bottom Line
Anthropic’s expansion in Singapore, coupled with the new MOU, highlights the strategic importance of the Asia-Pacific market for SI developers and the government’s focus on balancing innovation with safety and responsible adoption.