Anthropic has expanded its Asia-Pacific operations, opening an office in Singapore on Wednesday and signing a memorandum of understanding with the country's Ministry of Digital Development and Information on AI safety.
In a statement, Anthropic said Claude is already used by Singaporean businesses and government services like GovTech Singapore, Grab and DBS. According to Anthropic's Economic Index, Singapore ranks second of 121 countries in Claude usage relative to its population.
"We're committed to Singapore for the long term," said Dale Finlay, General Manager of ASEAN at Anthropic. "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."
Kai Fong Chng, Permanent Secretary of Singapore's Ministry of Digital Development and Information, and Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann signed the MOU during Singapore International Cyber Week. It covers cooperation in AI safety, security, and model evaluation, including research on AI adoption and its impact, and responsible adoption across the public and private sectors, Anthropic said.
AI safety and alignment remain major concerns for frontier AI developers. Last month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed slowing the pace of AI development, citing safety and alignment concerns. OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, and SpaceXSI's Elon Musk supported the proposal.
"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 on Wednesday. "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."
Anthropic has worked with the Singapore government since 2023, previously joining the Generative AI Evaluation Sandbox run by the Infocomm Media Development Authority and the AI Verify Foundation, and later partnering on a red-teaming project.
"Under the MOU, we plan to hold technical exchanges with Singapore's AI safety, security, and assurance institutions on model evaluation, testing standards, and incident response," Anthropic said. "We do similar work with safety institutes around the world, where sharing technical information provides governments with a clearer view of frontier AI capabilities and risks, while helping developers build safer models."