▲ Anthropic
US artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic, whose state-of-the-art AI models "Mythos 5" and "Fable 5" have been at the center of controversy due to US government export controls, has officially landed in South Korea.
On Wednesday (June 17), Anthropic opened its Seoul office and officially launched its push into the Korean market, unveiling a cooperation strategy that spans major domestic companies like Naver and Nexon, research institutions, and startups.
Chris Ciauri, Managing Director of International at Anthropic, said, "Korea is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world," adding, "Given Korea's technology and developer base, it would not be surprising if its per-capita usage ranking rises to the single digits soon."
According to Anthropic's Economic Index report, Korea ranks 12th out of 116 countries worldwide in per-capita Claude usage, placing it in the top tier of nations, with particularly high utilization in the technical and creative fields.
Regarding Korea's basic AI framework act, he evaluated, "It shares a philosophy with Anthropic through a risk-based approach that promotes innovation while maintaining safety in development."
Choi Ki-young, Representative Director of Anthropic Korea, stated, "Domestic companies and institutions recognize innovation and safety not as conflicting values, but as goals that must go hand in hand," adding, "The opening of the Seoul office signifies the establishment of a long-term foundation for cooperation with those leading Korea's AI leadership."
Regarding the business strategy in Korea, he said the company will make building a partner ecosystem with hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft (MS) a core pillar.
He added that the company is also reviewing data residency options tailored to the domestic regulatory environment, along with enhancing Korean language performance.
However, both executives remained tight-lipped regarding questions about the export controls on "Mythos 5" and "Fable 5," which have recently emerged as key issues surrounding Anthropic.
Ciauri said, "We expect this to be resolved within a few days," but drew a line when asked about the participation status of domestic companies and institutions in "Project Glasswing," stating, "I will not comment on Glasswing at this point."
On this day, Anthropic announced major domestic customer use cases and plans to expand the developer ecosystem.
Naver recently fully introduced Anthropic's AI coding agent, "Claude Code," across its entire engineering organization.
Currently, thousands of developers are utilizing it, which is described as one of the largest enterprise adoption cases in Asia.
Nexon's engineering organization is also applying Claude Code to code writing, review, and deployment tasks for its live-service games.
The wave of adoption is also continuing among large conglomerates.
LG CNS is sequentially rolling out Claude to thousands of employees for use in software development and technical solution tasks, with plans to expand the scope of adoption across the entire LG Group.
Samsung SDS is providing Claude Code and "Claude Co-work" to Samsung Electronics employees, while Hanwha Solutions is supporting its employees with Claude through AWS Bedrock.
In the startup sector, Channel Corporation has integrated Claude into its customer consultation AI platform, Channel Talk, using it to respond to customer inquiries and analyze business data.
Currently, around 230,000 companies in Korea, Japan, and the US use Channel Talk.
Regarding competitiveness in the enterprise market, Ciauri emphasized, "Anthropic is in a differentiated position as a frontier AI company that has focused on safety and enterprise from the very beginning," adding, "Our enterprise market share was leading at 40% as of four months ago."
He also revealed that Anthropic's Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) surged from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to $47 billion as of a few weeks ago.
Anthropic is also extending its reach into academia and the public interest sector.
First, in cooperation with the National AI Research Lab (NAIRL), the company has decided to provide free Claude accounts to up to 60 affiliated researchers.
NAIRL is a research consortium involving KAIST, Korea University, Yonsei University, and POSTECH, which will receive support for core research areas such as AI safety, model evaluation, and alignment.
In the non-profit sector, the company is partnering with Good Neighbors, a global child rights NGO.
Good Neighbors plans to introduce Claude for analyzing program outcomes, reviewing social welfare legislation, and improving administrative efficiency.
Anthropic is already operating its startup support program, "Claude for Startups," in Korea.
The "Claude Meetups" developer community event, first introduced in September 2025, attracts more than 100 domestic developers each time.
Anthropic stated, "We will fully launch the operations of our Seoul office, centered around Representative Choi Ki-young, who has built a 30-year career in the Korean technology industry, and make it a hub for supporting domestic customers and partners, as well as cooperating with the AI ecosystem."
(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.