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, this promise has never been more valuable.
OpenAI and Google DeepMind both established applied AI laboratories in the city-state last year when Anthropic began Advertising for local jobs in the areas of finance, product support and economic research. Chinese companies such as Tencent have also increased their investments in the country.
“All the AI companies I work with, whether they are from China, Korea or Japan, use Singapore as a hub,” said Gunja Gargeshwari, chief revenue officer at Israel-based web scraping company Bright Data Assets on the sidelines of the SuperAI summit in Singapore. “It’s easiest to operate in the region when I have people in Singapore – that’s where the discussions take place and the innovation centers for different providers are set up.” For example, Bright Data chose to position Singapore as its APAC headquarters even though 60% of its Asian customer base comes from China and India.
“We have a chance to stand out here,” said Nathan Xu, CEO of San Francisco-based AI note-taking company Plaud. “Unlike many US-only companies, if Plaud can aggressively position itself in Singapore, we are a cool company for potential users around the world.”
Plaud hired its first Singapore-based employee in 2024. On June 10, the company announced this Spend 10 million Singapore dollars (US$7.8 million). to expand its local activities. There are also plans to increase the number of employees from 100 to 150 by the end of the year.
Singapore’s attractiveness to the AI industry is due to both geopolitics and economics. The country markets itself as an economically safe haven with a long track record of regulatory clarity and strong governance.
“Some say we are boring and that we will never have the same offerings as New York and Paris,” said Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said during a political conference last July. “But at the same time, we are stable and predictable. We are reliable and we are trusted, and those are intangible assets that others would die for.”
Founders like Xu also point to the country’s rigorous education system as a breeding ground for technical talent. “The biggest problem for me and the company is hiring the best engineers, and the interesting thing about Singapore is that it is home to some of the best universities in the world,” explains Xu. (In this year’s QS World University Rankings the The National University of Singapore ranked 8th, while the country’s Nanyang Technological University ranked 12th.) “It is a place that curates generations of talent in software engineering, computer science, AI, data science and operations.”
AI companies are going global
AI expansion in Singapore reflects a broader shift across the industry. Global AI firms are shifting from training massive models to figuring out how to monetize their work in the real world.
“The defining feature of the AI cycle through 2025 has been capital spending… While this has expanded capacity and driven technology leadership, it has also generated skepticism,” he wrote BNY wealth analysts in a March report. “Attention has now decisively shifted from size to return on investment.”
For companies of Chinese origin such as Manus AI, Tencent and Alibaba, Singapore often serves as the first and decisive step on the path to globalization. To expand their presence in the country, Chinese tech giants are on the move hefty annual salary packages: Singapore-based positions for PhD holders in AI can range from $150,000 to $273,000.
“For some of my Chinese clients, the researchers can’t leave the country without telling the government — I kid you not,” Gargeshwari said. “Therefore, opening an office in Singapore and employing local staff is a necessity for doing business.”
For U.S. AI companies, overseas markets like Asia Pacific represent a huge, untapped customer base.
OpenAI opened a regional office in Singapore in 2024. Last month, the company committed 300 million Singapore dollars ($234 million) to expanding the country’s AI ecosystem. It also announced the opening of an applied AI lab – the first outside the US – that will make Singapore one of its centers for predictive engineers: specialized software engineers directly embedded in customer organizations to customize and deliver technical solutions.
Notion, the AI-powered productivity platform, opened an office in Singapore in mid-2025. “Our top priority is meeting and engaging with current and potential customers,” said Randy Hunt, the company’s design director. “I could do a demo for you on video, and while that might be effective, if I can do it sitting next to you, it will be better received.”
Anthropic is betting on enterprise AI rather than the consumer market, making Singapore, where many MNCs have their APAC headquarters, a natural choice.
Cracks in the system
Nevertheless, foreign governments are beginning to question Singapore’s neutrality.
Manus AI and its parent company Butterfly Effect moved their global headquarters to Singapore in mid-2025, both to escape Western regulatory control and to provide greater access to global capital. It sold in December Meta for $2 billion. Beijing quickly blocked the deal in April ordered the takeover to be reversed.
In the end, Manus’ legal status as a Singapore company didn’t matter: Manus’ continued presence in China was enough for Beijing to decide it had jurisdiction.
“Regulators have looked directly through Singapore’s holding structure at the Chinese origins of the technology,” said Sebastian Wiendieck, head of the China legal practice at law firm ROEDL. CNA said. “This represents a new normal: Any AI startup founded in China, regardless of its offshore location, will face intense national security scrutiny if it attempts to sell to a U.S. buyer.”
The US could also harm Singapore’s AI ambitions. Last week, the US government banned non-US persons from using Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model. Singapore could end up losing access to powerful frontier models from US companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.
Still, AI companies remain positive about expanding to Singapore. The country released its national AI research and development plan in January, along with a 1 billion Singapore dollar injection to fund the development of AI-related infrastructure and capabilities. The country also presented plans to build one AI industrial park called Kampong AIwhich is scheduled to open in 2028, with workspaces and residential facilities to attract AI start-ups.
“We feel welcome here,” Xu said. “We didn’t know we could build such a large and meaningful presence here; a year ago we had zero people here, but now we have almost a hundred.”