Anthropic Opens a Singapore Office and Signs an MDDI MOU on AI Safety and Evaluation
Anthropic announced on Oct. 14 a new Singapore office — its fifth in Asia-Pacific — and a memorandum of understanding with Singapore’s Ministry of Digital Development and Information covering AI safety, evaluation and responsible adoption. The MOU was signed by MDDI Permanent Secretary Kai Fong Chng and Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann.
Anthropic is putting a local office and a government agreement next to one of its densest Claude markets. In a post dated October 14, the company said it had opened a Singapore office — its fifth in Asia-Pacific — and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Singapore’s Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) on AI safety, security and model evaluation, research on AI adoption and impact, and responsible adoption across the public and private sectors.
What the MOU covers
Kai Fong Chng, Permanent Secretary of MDDI, and Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann signed the MOU on the sidelines of Singapore International Cyber Week, Anthropic said. Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo and Anthropic Head of APAC Policy Michael Sellitto witnessed. Under the MOU, Anthropic says it plans technical exchanges with Singapore’s AI safety, security and assurance institutions on model evaluation, testing standards and incident response, and plans to share research and data — including from the Anthropic Economic Index — as Singapore develops its AI rules.
Anthropic says its work with Singapore goes back to 2023, when it joined the Generative AI Evaluation Sandbox run by the Infocomm Media Development Authority and the AI Verify Foundation, and later partnered on a red-teaming project in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.
CNA reported the same signing and quoted Mann calling safety evaluation among the most “exciting” areas of the MOU. Dale Finlay, Anthropic’s ASEAN general manager, told CNA the focus is go-to-market and that the company is not sharing headcount numbers.
How Anthropic describes Singapore’s Claude use
In Anthropic’s latest Economic Index, Singapore ranks second of 121 countries in Claude.ai usage relative to population, at nearly six times what its size alone would predict. Anthropic says more than 1,500 engineers and technical staff at GovTech Singapore have adopted Claude Code; that DBS, GIC, Grab and Sea (Shopee, Garena, Monee) are customers; and that organizations in regulated sectors can run Claude with in-region inference on Amazon Bedrock.
Anthropic also said it hosted Builder Summit Singapore for more than 300 developers and that community ambassadors held a meetup for more than 700 builders earlier in the week. The office is open and hiring, the company said.
Limits
- The MOU is a cooperation framework. Anthropic does not describe exclusive model access, enforceability or dollar commitments.
- Customer counts, hours saved and Economic Index rankings are Anthropic’s figures.
- Headcount for the Singapore office was not disclosed.