Anthropic, the U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) company that developed the AI model 'Claude', is officially launching its Seoul office and shifting its push into the Korean market into full gear. Pointing to Korea as a core global market, the company rolled out a strategy to expand collaboration with conglomerates, startups, and research institutions.
At a press conference held at the Conrad Hotel in Yeouido on the 17th, Choi Ki-young, country manager of Anthropic Korea, stated, “Korea is one of the few countries in the world to have established comprehensive legislation on AI, and it is a nation possessed of full-stack AI capabilities.” Choi added, “We will cooperate so that we can grow together with Korean companies and research institutions in the rapidly changing AI ecosystem.”
Anthropic is commencing the full-scale operations of its Seoul office, centered around Country Manager Choi. The Seoul office will serve as a core hub for supporting domestic customers and partners, while simultaneously encompassing collaboration across major domestic enterprises and research institutions.
Behind Anthropic's full-scale entry into domestic business lies the rapid growth rate of the Korean market. According to an economic index report published by Anthropic last March, Korea's Claude usage ranks near the top globally, exceeding expectations by more than 3.5 times relative to its population size.
Chris Ciauri, president of Anthropic International, said, “Korea is the fastest-growing market worldwide and currently ranks 12th out of 166 countries based on usage volume, but it will rise to a single-digit ranking in the near future.” Ciauri added, “We expect it to continue showing the highest level of growth rate going forward.”
The utilization of Claude is already prominent within the developer ecosystem. Naver recently introduced Claude Code across its entire engineering organization to maximize coding productivity. Nexon is also utilizing Claude Code to perform code writing, review, and deployment tasks for its live service games.
Major domestic conglomerates are also adopting Claude. LG CNS provides Claude to thousands of executives and employees, applying it to software development and customer-facing tech solution delivery tasks. Hanwha Solutions is providing Claude to its global executives and employees through AWS Bedrock. However, the company emphasized that such partnerships are not exclusive cooperations that benefit only specific companies.
To strengthen cooperation with the domestic AI research ecosystem, Anthropic also plans to collaborate with the National AI Research Lab (NAIRL). It will provide free Claude accounts to up to 60 affiliated researchers to support research on AI safety, model evaluation, alignment, and model robustness.
With the recent revelation that the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and SK Telecom are participating in 'Glasswing', a global cybersecurity cooperation project pursued by Anthropic, the possibility of expanding collaboration has heightened.
However, as the U.S. government recently made an export control decision on Anthropic's cutting-edge AI models 'Mythos 5' and 'Fable 5' for national security reasons, the access of Korean companies and institutions has been restricted, drawing attention to the future direction of cooperation. At the press conference on this day, many questions regarding Project Glasswing were raised, but Anthropic held its words back.
President Ciauri said, “At this point in time, there is no content that can be shared regarding Project Glasswing,” but added, “However, we view this as a very limited case that will be resolved shortly, so we do not think the export control guidelines will exert an influence for a long time.”
