Anthropic Opens Singapore Office, Signs Government MOU

Anthropic has opened its fifth Asia-Pacific office in Singapore and signed a memorandum of understanding with the city-state's Ministry of Digital Development and Information, the company announced on October 14.

Co-founder Ben Mann signed the MOU with Kai Fong Chng, Permanent Secretary of the ministry. Minister Josephine Teo and Michael Sellitto, Anthropic's Head of APAC Policy, witnessed. The agreement covers AI safety, security, and model evaluation, along with research on AI adoption and impact and responsible adoption across public and private sectors.

The usage figures Anthropic published alongside the opening are unusually specific. Singapore ranks second of 121 countries in Claude.ai usage relative to population, a rate the company says is nearly six times its predicted rate. Over 1,500 engineers at GovTech Singapore use Claude Code, and the Cyber Security Agency is exploring applications.

"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," said Dale Finlay, General Manager of ASEAN.

The customer list reads like a map of regional capital and consumer tech. DBS, which Anthropic calls Southeast Asia's largest bank, uses Claude for software development and productivity. GIC, the sovereign wealth fund, uses it for investment and corporate services. Grab's BriX sales assistant is credited with saving 40,000 hours quarterly. Sea/Shopee runs a customer service chatbot and developer tools on Claude, and Supabase is building with Claude Code. Anthropic says its Builder Summit Singapore drew 300+ developers and a community ambassadors' meetup pulled 700+ local builders.

The announcement lands the same day the EU AI Office opened its first AI Act probes into OpenAI and Anthropic — a split-screen week in which Anthropic is being investigated in Brussels and invited into government infrastructure in Singapore.