Anthropic has opened its first office in Seoul. The move comes just months after the company first signaled plans for a local base. It signals a serious bet on one of the world’s most sophisticated markets for generative AI.
The timing feels deliberate. South Korea ranks among the top users of Claude worldwide. Usage there skews heavily toward technical and creative tasks. Korean organizations already deploy the model at rates far exceeding what population size alone would suggest. Anthropic’s own Economic Index places the country in the upper tier globally for per-capita engagement.
But numbers only tell part of the story. Executives describe Korean teams as uniquely attuned to pairing rapid innovation with rigorous safety standards. “What I see in Korea are teams who understand that innovation and safety are two sides of the same coin,” said KiYoung Choi, Anthropic’s Representative Director of Korea. “Korean organizations are building with Claude to bring the benefits of AI to millions around the world. Opening an office in Seoul gives a long-term home to our work alongside the people shaping Korean leadership in AI.”
Choi joined from Snowflake, where he served as general manager for Korea. His three decades leading technology operations across the region at firms including Google Cloud and Adobe made him a natural choice. The office, now open and actively hiring, marks Anthropic’s third location in Asia-Pacific after earlier footholds in Tokyo and Bengaluru.
Partnerships announced alongside the office opening span government, big business, startups, academia and even nonprofits. They paint a picture of broad integration rather than isolated pilots.
At the public level, Anthropic signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT. The pact focuses on responsible AI adoption in government, joint model safety testing in the Korean language through the Korea AI Safety Institute, and information sharing on AI-related cybersecurity threats. Such collaboration gains added weight amid recent U.S. export-control directives that temporarily restricted access to Anthropic’s most advanced models, including Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Executives in Seoul expressed confidence those models would return to availability within days. KED Global reported that the controls appear unlikely to slow Anthropic’s local momentum.
On the enterprise side the list runs deep. NAVER has rolled out Claude Code across its entire engineering organization. Thousands of developers now rely on it to broaden their coding toolkit and lift productivity. Gaming giant Nexon uses the same capabilities to write, review and ship code for live-service titles played by millions globally.
The country’s largest conglomerates show similar enthusiasm. LG CNS, the IT services unit of LG Group, is introducing Claude to thousands of employees for software development and client solutions. The rollout will extend across the broader LG organization. Samsung SDS is deploying the model—including features such as Claude Cowork and Claude Code—to staff at Samsung Electronics. Teams apply it to knowledge work, agentic systems and large-scale software projects. Hanwha Solutions brings Claude to its global workforce through AWS Bedrock, satisfying strict data-residency and security rules.
Startups have embedded Claude directly into products. Channel Corp powers its Channel Talk customer-service platform with the model. The tool handles inquiries, analyzes sales and service data, and delivers insights. More than 230,000 companies across Korea, Japan and the United States now use it.
Academic ties run through the National AI Research Lab, a consortium that includes KAIST, Korea University, Yonsei University and POSTECH. Anthropic will grant Claude access to as many as 60 affiliated researchers focused on safety, model evaluation, alignment and frontier questions.
Even the nonprofit sector sees value. Good Neighbors Korea, a child-rights organization, deploys Claude to review program results, interpret welfare regulations and shrink administrative burdens. “As we deploy Claude across our organization, we expect the efficiency gains to free our staff from administrative workload so they can focus more on what matters most: serving vulnerable children and communities,” said Jeongsun Park, chief administrative officer at the group.
Developer activity feels especially vibrant. Claude meetups have drawn hundreds of Korean engineers since late 2025. The company launched its Claude for Startups program locally, offering credits, technical support and specialized tools. This week Anthropic co-hosted a Claude Build Day with BASS Ventures that brought together more than 100 founders and developers. A Push to Prod hackathon with Replit, Korea Investment Partners and Korea Investment Accelerator is next.
The Yahoo Finance report highlighted Anthropic’s first Seoul Builder Summit, organized with local AI startup Coxwave. The event targeted developers, startups and businesses already experimenting with Claude.
All this activity occurs against a backdrop of intensifying global competition. South Korea has become a proving ground where American, Chinese and domestic players vie for enterprise contracts and regulatory favor. Samsung and SK Hynix have invested in Anthropic in past funding rounds, tying chipmakers directly to the Claude ecosystem. Recent data cited by KED Global shows Claude has overtaken ChatGPT in South Korea’s paid generative-AI market.
The expansion also carries financial implications. Anthropic continues to prepare for a potential initial public offering. A strong showing in a tech-savvy market like South Korea could bolster its credentials with investors who prize both growth and responsible deployment. Local infrastructure partnerships, data-residency arrangements and government alignment all help address concerns that have slowed AI adoption in more regulated industries elsewhere.
Yet challenges remain. U.S. export rules on frontier models create temporary friction even as Korean officials secure continued access to tools such as Mythos for cybersecurity research. Executives emphasize that compliance does not diminish their commitment to the market. Instead, the office and partnerships reflect a long-term view. They aim to co-develop solutions that respect both innovation speed and safety requirements Korean leaders hold dear.
KiYoung Choi’s leadership will prove pivotal. His track record guiding Korean enterprises through cloud transitions and now into AI suggests he understands the cultural and technical nuances that separate successful deployments from failed experiments. The office is hiring aggressively across engineering, policy, sales and research roles. Early indications point to a team built to support everything from custom model evaluations in Korean to on-the-ground developer advocacy.
For now the message is clear. Anthropic sees South Korea not merely as another geography to enter but as a strategic partner capable of shaping the next wave of safe, high-impact AI applications. Korean companies and researchers already push Claude into ambitious territory. The new Seoul outpost simply formalizes a collaboration that has been accelerating for years. And the results of that partnership will likely influence AI strategies far beyond the Korean peninsula.
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