OpenAI ramps up Singapore team amid billion-dollar data centre push in Asia

[SINGAPORE] OpenAI’s Singapore office is emerging as a key pillar in its global expansion, as the world’s most valuable startup prepares to pour billions into data-centre infrastructure to support explosive ChatGPT demand.

“We’ve got 700 million-plus weekly active users of ChatGPT, and serving data, serving AI (artificial intelligence) at that scale requires data infrastructure investment at an equal scale,” said OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap, in a recent interview with The Business Times.

“We’re going to continue to invest behind growth and demand, and if that brings us here to Singapore or anywhere else, we’re very open to it,” he said.

OpenAI, which opened its Singapore office at the end of 2024, also plans to expand its headcount in the city-state to 50 by year end, from about 30 now.

The immediate priority is to hire for external-facing roles that serve clients, though recruitment will also extend “across the entire spectrum” of functions.

“(Singapore) will, I think, be one of our larger Apac offices by the end of the year, because we just feel like we have to invest to be able to support that level of interest and that level of demand,” Lightcap said.

The ChatGPT maker’s Singapore office was its second Asia-Pacific outpost after Tokyo. In September, it opened an office in Seoul and has plans to launch in New Delhi and Sydney by year end.

Earlier in October, OpenAI signed a series of agreements with the South Korean government to explore the building of data centres there. It also announced partnerships with chipmakers Samsung and SK to supply chips and other components for OpenAI’s US$500 billion Stargate initiative.

The company’s expansion across Apac comes amid surging ChatGPT usage in the region, with weekly user numbers up four times from a year ago.

Apac now accounts for more weekly users than any other region, Lightcap noted, though OpenAI does not disclose country-specific figures.

Earlier in October, OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman said the company had surpassed 800 million weekly users, up from 700 million in August and 500 million in March. Just days before that, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI’s valuation had exceeded US$500 billion, overtaking Elon Musk’s SpaceX to become the world’s most valuable startup.

The enterprise version of ChatGPT exceeded five million seats – the number of paid user accounts or licences – as at September, up from three million in the preceding three months, Lightcap said.

“So just fantastic growth there, and a lot of that (is) driven by demand here in Apac,” he said.

When asked about challenges in countries such as Japan and South Korea, where legacy tech systems remain prevalent, Lightcap instead described these as opportunities.

“You can just dump data into a language model, and it will understand the patterns and the structures and the data in ways that lets you make all that data useful,” he explained.

“You can (now) build entirely new applications very quickly, and that’s what we see in practice, time and again,” he said.

“And so in some ways, working with companies that have these legacy code bases, these legacy data systems, actually is an amazing opportunity for where we can deploy AI to make a difference.”