OpenAI said in a post on X that it is opening new offices in multiple cities, including NYC, Seattle, Paris, Brussels, and Singapore, in addition to its existing locations in San Francisco, London, Dublin and Tokyo, as part of the company’s global expansion efforts.
The expansion effort follows the San Francisco-based ChatGPT maker’s whopping $ 6.4 billion funding round, a restructuring plan announcement, and a series of executive departures.
The company also said managing director Oliver Jay (formerly the chief revenue officer at Asana and head of APAC and LATAM at Dropbox) will oversee international operations and facilitate global expansion from Singapore.
A spokesperson at OpenAI told TechCrunch the company has started building a team in Singapore, which will serve as a hub to support customers and partners in the Asia Pacific region. The company is currently hiring engineers, and plans to open the Singapore office at the end of this year. This will be OpenAI’s second office in Asia, following the launch of the Tokyo office in April.
“Singaporeans are some of the highest per capita users of ChatGPT worldwide, with the number of weekly active users in Singapore doubling since the beginning of the year,” OpenAI said in a statement.
Alongside the new office, OpenAI said it is partnering with AI Singapore to expand access to its AI technology in Southeast Asia. AI Singapore, initiated in 2017 by the National Research Foundation (NRF), is a national program that supports Singaporean companies and research organizations in leveraging AI.
“Singapore, with its rich history of technology leadership, has emerged as a leader in artificial intelligence, recognizing its potential to solve some of society’s hardest problems and advance economic prosperity,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI in a statement. “We’re excited to partner with the government and the country’s thriving AI ecosystem as we expand into the APAC region.”