U.S. artificial intelligence company Anthropic will run its latest AI model, "Claude Opus 4.8," at a data center in Korea. The move is a foothold for making a full-scale push into the country's banks, hospitals, and other financial and medical sectors, where the adoption of foreign AI has been limited due to regulations on sensitive information.
According to the information technology (IT) industry on Monday, Anthropic will launch an "in-region" service running Claude Opus 4.8 at Amazon Web Services' (AWS) Seoul region data center within a few weeks. "We plan to provide Claude Opus 4.8 in-region at the AWS Seoul region within a few weeks," an Anthropic official said. "We will be able to sell Claude-based AI services even to industries that require strict data storage regulations."
In-region is a method that confines an AI model's inference to data centers within a single region. Typically, foreign AI services exchange data by jointly utilizing data centers around the world. In-region, by contrast, binds AI model operation and data processing within the relevant region and restricts sharing with data centers in other regions. If Anthropic stores data only in the Seoul region and runs its AI there, the cross-border transfer of sensitive information is blocked.
This targets data regulations in finance and healthcare. Under electronic financial supervision rules, financial firms must keep servers within the country when handling sensitive information such as personal credit information and unique identification information through cloud systems. Electronic medical record standards also require medical institutions to limit the physical location of servers to within the country when using the cloud. In both sectors, cloud use itself is permitted, but domestic servers are a prerequisite for handling sensitive information.
If Anthropic supports operation in the Seoul region, a path opens for these institutions to process even sensitive information with Claude. Anthropic aims to meet this requirement and broaden its customer base into regulated industries such as finance and healthcare.
Like Anthropic's case of breaking through regulations, the scope of foreign AI services penetrating the domestic market is expected to expand broadly going forward, reaching not only the general public but also the corporate and public sectors. As AI moves beyond a tool for assisting individual tasks to eyeing a role as an essential asset for governments and companies, the importance of securing AI technology sovereignty is being highlighted in tandem. ▷See pages 4 and 5
