OpenAI sees new Singapore office supporting its fast growth in the region

OpenAI plans to open an office in Singapore to support its growth and expansion in the Asia-Pacific region. 

Slated to begin operating later this year, the new outfit will facilitate increasing demand for advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the region, said OpenAI in a statement Wednesday. It will serve as a hub to boost relationships with local and regional governments, institutions, and businesses across Asia-Pacific. 

The decision to locate it in Singapore also reflects the country's leading position in the technology and industry, the AI vendor said. 

The Asian market has seen the number of weekly ChatGPT active users double since the start of 2024 and is home to some of the highest per capita users of the generative AI application. 

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"Singapore, with its rich history of technology leadership, has emerged as a leader in AI, recognizing its potential to solve some of society's hardest problems and advance economic prosperity," said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. He had alluded to potential plans to set up a local office during his visit to Singapore last year. 

Its presence in the Asian market will enable the company to collaborate more closely with Singapore government agencies, including Economic Development Board (EDB), said OpenAI. 

Apart from new partnerships, Singapore also is hoping the new outfit will pull more AI companies into the region, said EDB's managing director Jacqueline Poh.

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OpenAI has hired Oliver Jay as its managing director for international, based in Singapore. Jay will drive the company's global operations and growth in Singapore and region. 

It also announced a $1 million investment to develop resources, including open datasets, that aim to ensure AI models are fitted for Southeast Asia's diverse languages and cultures. The funds will be made through a partnership with AI Singapore, the government agency behind the development of Southeast Asian Languages in One Network (SEA-LION), an open-source large language model touted to be smaller, more flexible, and faster compared to others on the market today. 

Pre-trained and instruct-tuned for Southeast Asian languages and cultures, SEA-LION has been trained on 981 billion language tokens, including 623 billion English tokens, 128 billion Southeast Asia tokens, and 91 billion Chinese tokens.  

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"We welcome OpenAI's participation in our shared vision in enhancing Southeast Asian representation in the global landscape of LLMs," said Leslie Teo, senior director of AI products at AI Singapore. "This effort will improve the availability and quality of Southeast Asian data and encourage further development and adoption of AI models and solutions in our region." 

OpenAI plans to hold its first Developer Day in Singapore on Nov. 21. 

Apart from the upcoming Singapore office, OpenAI also operates an outfit in Tokyo, which was its first in Asia when it was officially launched in April this year. Businesses in Japan then were offered early access to a custom GPT-4 model optimized for the Japanese language. 

OpenAI opened its first international office in London in June 2023 and added Dublin to the mix in September of that year.