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Singapore has spent decades selling the world on the promise that it can be trusted by all sides. For a new generation of AI companies, that pledge has never been more valuable.<\/p>\n
OpenAI and Google<\/a> DeepMind<\/a> both established applied AI labs in the city-state<\/a> over the past year, while Anthropic began advertising local positions<\/a> in finance, product support, and economic research. Chinese firms like Tencent have also deepened their investment in the country.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the AI companies I work with, whether they\u2019re from China, Korea or Japan, all use Singapore as a hub,\u201d Gunja Gargeshwari, the chief revenue officer of Israel-headquartered web scraping firm Bright Data, told Fortune <\/em>on the sidelines of the SuperAI summit in Singapore. \u201cIt\u2019s easiest to operate in the region if I have people in Singapore\u2014it\u2019s where conversations are happening, and where the innovation hubs for different providers are being set up.\u201d Bright Data, for instance, has chosen to position Singapore as its APAC headquarters, even though 60% of its Asian customer base hails from China and India.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have the chance to stand out here,\u201d said Nathan Xu, the CEO of San Francisco-based AI notetaker company Plaud. \u201cUnlike many companies that originate entirely from the U.S., if Plaud can position ourselves aggressively in Singapore, then we\u2019re a cool company to prospective users across the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n Plaud hired its first Singapore-based employee in 2024. On June 10, the company said it would spend 10 million Singapore dollars ($7.8 million)<\/a> to expand its local operations. It also plans to\u00a0grow its headcount from 100 to 150 by the end of the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Singapore\u2019s appeal to the AI industry is as much due to geopolitics as economics. The country markets itself as an economic safe haven, with a long track record of regulatory clarity and strong governance.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSome say we are boring, and we will never have the same offerings as New York and Paris,\u201d Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said during a policy conference last July<\/a>. \u201cBut at the same time, we are stable, we are predictable. We are reliable and we are trusted, and these are intangible assets that others would die to have.\u201d<\/p>\n Founders like Xu also point to the country\u2019s rigorous education system as an incubator for tech talent. \u201cThe biggest pain for me and the company is hiring the best engineers, and what\u2019s interesting about Singapore is that it\u2019s home to some of the best universities in the world,\u201d Xu explains. (In this year\u2019s QS World University Rankings, the National University of Singapore ranked #8, while the country\u2019s Nanyang Technological University came in at #12<\/a>.) \u201cIt\u2019s a place which curates generations of talents around software engineering, computer science, AI, data science and operations.\u201d<\/p>\n The AI build-out in Singapore reflects a broader change across the industry. Global AI firms are shifting away from training massive models to instead figuring out how to monetize their work in the real world.<\/p>\n \u201cThe defining feature of the AI cycle through 2025 was capital expenditure\u2026 while this has expanded capacity and driven technology leadership, it has also invited skepticism,\u201d wrote BNY\u2019s wealth analysts in a March report<\/a>. \u201cAttention has now turned decisively from scale to return on investment.\u201d<\/p>\n For firms of Chinese origin, like Manus AI, Tencent, and Alibaba, Singapore often serves as a first and crucial step in going global. To build out their presence in the country, Chinese tech giants are dangling hefty annual pay packages<\/a>: Singapore-based roles for holders of PhDs in AI can range between $150,000 to $273,000.<\/p>\n \u201cFor some of my Chinese customers, the researchers can\u2019t leave the country without telling the government\u2014I kid you not,\u201d said Gargeshwari. \u201cSo opening an office in Singapore and having local employees is a necessity for them to do business.\u201d<\/p>\n For U.S. AI firms, overseas markets like those in Asia Pacific represent a massive untapped customer base.\u00a0<\/p>\n OpenAI opened a regional office in Singapore in 2024. Last month, the firm committed 300 million Singapore dollars ($234 million) to growing the country\u2019s AI ecosystem. It also announced the opening of an applied AI lab\u2014the first outside of the U.S.\u2014which is set to make Singapore one of its hubs for forward deployed engineers: specialized software engineers who embed directly within customer organizations to customize and deploy tech solutions.<\/p>\n Notion, the AI-powered productivity platform, opened a Singapore office in mid-2025<\/a>. \u201cOur number one priority is to meet and interface with current and potential customers,\u201d said Randy Hunt, the company\u2019s head of design. \u201cI could do a demo for you over video, and while that may be effective, if I can do it sitting next to you, it resonates better.\u201d<\/p>\n Anthropic is betting on enterprise AI instead of the consumer market, which makes Singapore, where many MNCs house their APAC headquarters, a natural choice. <\/p>\n Yet, foreign governments are starting to challenge Singapore\u2019s neutrality.<\/p>\n Manus AI and its parent company, Butterfly Effect, relocated its global headquarters to Singapore in mid-2025 to both avoid Western regulatory scrutiny and better access global capital. In December, it sold itself to Meta<\/a> for $2 billion. Beijing quickly moved to block the deal, and in April ordered the acquisition to be unwound<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the end, Manus\u2019s legal status as a Singapore company didn\u2019t matter: its continued footprint in China was enough for Beijing to decide it had jurisdiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRegulators looked straight through the Singapore holding structure to the technology\u2019s Chinese origin,\u201d Sebastian Wiendieck, the head of legal practice in China at law firm ROEDL, told CNA<\/a>. \u201cThis marks a new normal: any China-founded AI startup, regardless of its offshore domicile, will face intense national security scrutiny if it tries to sell to a U.S. buyer.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S., too, could hurt Singapore\u2019s AI ambitions. Last week, the U.S. government barred non-U.S. individuals from using Anthropic\u2019s powerful Mythos model. Singapore could end up losing access to powerful frontier models from U.S. companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, AI firms remain positive about expanding into Singapore. The country released its national AI R&D plan in January, alongside a 1 billion Singapore dollar injection<\/a> to fund the buildout of AI-related infrastructure and capabilities. The country also set out plans to build an AI industrial park called Kampong AI<\/a>, set to open in 2028 with workspaces and housing facilities to woo AI start-ups.<\/p>\n \u201cWe feel like we are welcomed here,\u201d Xu said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know we\u2019d be able to set up such a big and meaningful presence here; a year ago, we had zero people here, but now we have close to a hundred.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Singapore has spent decades selling the world on the promise that it can be trusted by all sides. For a new generation of AI companies,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/62137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}AI firms go global<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Cracks in the system<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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