Anthropic, the developer of artificial intelligence model "Claude," has begun recruiting sales and development staff in South Korea. The move comes ahead of establishing a Korean office as the company prepares to aggressively pursue enterprise customers. With OpenAI already expanding its presence in the domestic market, competition for dominance among global companies including Google and Anthropic is expected to intensify in South Korea, a market with high AI adoption rates.
According to industry sources on the 9th, Anthropic is currently hiring for five positions in South Korea. While specific requirements vary by role, most positions require three to ten years of experience in relevant fields.
Prior to the recruitment drive, Anthropic appointed Scott Alexander Booth from its legal team as a director of its Korean entity early last month. The company is also separately seeking to recruit a country manager for Korea. Industry observers expect the Korean office to officially open once the country manager appointment and organizational structure are finalized. This will be Anthropic's third overseas office in the Asia-Pacific region, following India and Japan.
In its job postings, Anthropic stated it will "sign strategic contracts with Korean companies and create new value streams across their businesses," adding that it will "serve as a key technical advisor to enterprise customers during Claude implementation." The inclusion of sales positions targeting both large corporations and startups also signals the company's intent to pursue the B2B market.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by CEO Dario Amodei and other former OpenAI employees. The company has emerged as a major competitor to OpenAI and Google with its generative AI "Claude." Claude is particularly popular among developers for its superior coding performance. Recently, the company launched "Claude CoWork," enabling office workers without programming knowledge to create workflow automation apps for document summarization, data analysis, and contract review through conversations with AI. Some observers note it could replace expensive specialized software.
South Korea is considered a market where generative AI usage has spread rapidly. According to Mobile Index, ChatGPT's monthly active users in South Korea reached approximately 14.29 million as of January this year, a roughly 277-fold increase compared to 2023. Claude usage is also substantial. According to economic index data released by Anthropic last month, South Korea ranked seventh globally in Claude usage, following Israel, Singapore, and the United States.
For these reasons, global AI companies are racing to enter South Korea and compete. OpenAI, which has already established a Korean entity, is accelerating its B2B business expansion. Having recruited Kim Kyung-hoon, former head of Google Korea, as country manager, OpenAI is now hiring director-level talent to handle sales to large corporations and SMEs. Google is also focusing on expanding "Gemini Enterprise" with its "full-stack AI" strategy that provides integrated TPU and partner platform offerings. An industry source said, "Global AI companies will expand their sales to domestic companies, starting with foreign companies operating in Korea," adding, "There is a strong possibility that strategies to provide customized AI solutions will be strengthened, targeting companies hesitant to adopt external generative AI due to security concerns."