Claude-maker Anthropic eyes Korea with new office

Anthropic, a rapidly growing US artificial intelligence company and developer of the Claude language model, has begun hiring in South Korea as it prepares to open a Seoul office focused on enterprise sales.

Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, Anthropic is best known for Claude, a generative AI assistant positioned as an alternative to ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. While its global user base is far smaller, Claude has gained a strong following among developers and enterprise clients for its reasoning capabilities and reliability in complex tasks.

Anthropic is currently recruiting five Seoul-based roles — four in sales and one in finance and strategy — aimed at expanding its enterprise footprint in Korea. The job postings emphasize business development, B2B support, and onboarding services, suggesting a clear focus on corporate adoption.

Last month, the company appointed legal team member Scott Alexander Booth as a registered director of the Korean entity. A country manager is also being recruited, with the office expected to launch once leadership is in place. Korea would mark Anthropic’s third office in the Asia-Pacific region, following Japan and India.

The company’s expansion comes at a time when its latest AI tools are drawing significant attention in global enterprise markets. In January, Anthropic released Claude Cowork, a tool that enables nontechnical employees to build workflow automation apps simply by conversing with the AI. The release immediately sparked a market reaction: Legal workflow features in Cowork triggered share price declines at several major legal software firms, including Thomson Reuters.

In Korea, the product’s disruptive potential has already reached the policy level, prompting discussion in the National Assembly on Monday over how local regulation is hindering domestic legaltech development.

Anthropic’s growing footprint reflects Korea’s strategic importance for global AI firms. In its Anthropic Economic Index released last month, the company ranked Korea seventh out of 116 countries worldwide for Claude usage intensity. The index adjusts raw usage data by the size of each country’s working-age population, offering a per capita view of how deeply the AI is embedded in everyday professional work.

Korea’s market is also highly lucrative. In November last year, mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower estimated that Korean users have generated around $200 million in cumulative revenue from the ChatGPT mobile app, placing Korea second globally behind the US in total app revenue. With revenue per download at $8.70, which is nearly equal to the US figure of $8.80, Korea stood out for its exceptional user monetization.

Anthropic enters a Korean AI landscape already populated by global competitors. OpenAI has operated a local entity since late 2025, led by former Google Korea chief Kim Kyoung-hoon, and is actively expanding its enterprise team. Google is promoting its Gemini Enterprise product through established Korean operations, integrating its AI models into services such as Workspace and Android.