Senior Anthropic executives are scheduled to visit Seoul in the coming weeks to formally inaugurate the office and meet with major enterprise clients, the company said Wednesday.
Choi joins from Snowflake, where he served as Korea country manager, and brings more than three decades of experience steering global technology firms in the Asia-Pacific region. He previously led Korean operations for Google Cloud, Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft.
"Korea ranks among the world's most mature AI markets in terms of hardware innovation, developer talent and corporate adoption," Choi said.
"Domestic companies combine strong technical capabilities with a genuine commitment to responsible AI, and we are building our Korea business for the long term."
The Seoul team is to pursue tailored go-to-market strategies and forge partnerships across enterprises, developers and research institutions. According to Anthropic's Economic Index report published in March, Claude usage in South Korea runs at about 3.5 times the level expected for its population size, with particularly strong adoption in technology and creative sectors.
Domestic users already include legal tech startup Law&Company, which has built a Claude-powered legal assistant, and SK Telecom, which has deployed the model in customer service operations.
Anthropic enters a Korean market where global rivals have moved quickly.
OpenAI launched its Korean subsidiary in May 2025 and formally opened a Seoul office last September, naming former Google Korea chief Kim Kyoung-hoon as country manager — its third Asian base after Tokyo and Singapore.
Google has been pushing its Gemini models in Korea through existing Google Cloud and Android channels, including a high-profile partnership with Samsung Electronics that has embedded Gemini in flagship Galaxy devices and the Ballie home robot.
The rush reflects South Korea's strategic weight in the global AI value chain.
The country dominates high-bandwidth memory chip production through Samsung Electronics and SK hynix — critical inputs for AI training infrastructure — and houses some of the world's heaviest enterprise AI adopters in semiconductors, automotive, shipbuilding and consumer electronics, giving foreign model developers both a supply base and a high-value customer pool to court.
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