South Korea in early talks with Anthropic on AI cooperation

Seoul [South Korea], March 16 : South Korea has held early talks with Anthropic, developer of the Claude AI model, as Seoul looks to broaden its engagement with major global artificial intelligence companies beyond OpenAI, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT.
As per a report from the Korea Herald, a ministry official said that Deputy Prime Minister and Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon met Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei at an AI summit in India in February, where the two discussed AI technology, industry trends and the possibility of future cooperation.
"But nothing has been decided on a memorandum of understanding or any specific form of cooperation," the official said, as per the Korea Herald report, emphasising that the talks remain at a preliminary stage.
Yonhap News Agency earlier reported that the discussion had included possible policy cooperation with Anthropic, collaboration on applying AI to public services and potential AI safety-related work. The ministry did not confirm any specific framework.
The contact is notable because Anthropic has become increasingly relevant to governments and enterprise buyers as Claude gains traction among developers and enterprise users, particularly in coding and workflow-related tasks. That momentum has helped raise Anthropic's profile beyond the narrower circle of AI researchers and startups.
South Korea is also a meaningful market for the company. In Anthropic's January 2026 Economic Index, Korea ranked seventh out of 116 countries in Claude usage intensity, a measure adjusted for each country's working-age population to show relative adoption.
Anthropic has also been building a local footprint. The US firm began hiring in Seoul last month and has been preparing a Korean office focused on enterprise sales, pending the appointment of a country manager. A local office would give Anthropic a more direct base in a market where OpenAI and Google are also expanding their enterprise AI businesses.
As per the news report, Seoul's most visible foreign AI partnership has so far centred on OpenAI. In October 2025, the Science Ministry signed a memorandum of understanding with OpenAI on AI ecosystem development, public-sector AI transformation and talent cultivation. The government later launched a working-level task force to pursue follow-up projects.
At the same time, the government has also backed homegrown foundation models for more sensitive fields such as defence and health care, where data security, regulatory control and national strategic interests carry greater weight.