Hello Betamax, I attended OpenAI's first official developer event in Vietnam last week. As an AI enthusiast, I've been pretty jealous of my peers in Singapore, where major players like OpenAI seem to have already had a presence for some time. I suspect many AI-pilled people feel the same way. It's always exciting to be near the companies and people building at the frontier. That pang of jealousy left me curious about which major global players are actually already in the city-state. I looked into their hiring data to find out, and today's top story is the result. The timing felt right: These past two months alone, huge names like ex-Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun's AMI Labs and leading AI coding startups like Cursor and Cognition have all announced bases in Singapore. Nearly 30 of the world's 250 most valuable AI firms are currently hiring in the city-state, with OpenAI, ElevenLabs, and Mistral AI among the most active recruiters. Curiously, our tracker has not found open roles at Chinese billion-dollar AI startups such as Z.ai or Moonshot AI, even though some have appointed local leads and are courting users across Southeast Asia. Global AI companies' footprint in Singapore is likely to keep growing, as more leading firms look to tap the region's huge market. Also in today's edition, my colleague Miguel tracks the upcoming IPO deals in Southeast Asia, including Singapore-based workspace provider JustCo and Malaysia-headquartered chip design company SkyeChip. After years of tight funding in the region, any exit should be celebrated as a good sign for the ecosystem. Duc Tran, data journalist |
