Anthropic Expands to Japan with Tokyo Office and AI Safety Partnership

Anthropic has opened its first Asia-Pacific office in Tokyo and signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the Japan AI Safety Institute. This expansion marks a strategic move to deepen partnerships with the Japanese government, enterprises, and cultural institutions to promote AI development that enhances human capabilities.

Establishing International AI Evaluation Standards

Anthropic is collaborating with the Japan AI Safety Institute to develop shared AI evaluation methodologies and monitor emerging trends. This partnership is part of a broader international effort to create standardized ways to assess capabilities, test systems, and understand risks as AI systems become more powerful.

This cooperation builds on existing agreements with other global safety bodies, including:

• The US Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI).
• The UK's AI Security Institute.

In November 2024, the US and UK institutes conducted a joint evaluation of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, illustrating the potential for international organizations to advance AI evaluation science. Additionally, Anthropic has joined the Hiroshima AI Process Friends Group to support a framework for safe, secure, and trustworthy AI development.

AI Adoption and Enterprise Use Cases in Japan

Japan ranks in the top 25% globally for AI adoption, with a primary focus on using AI as a collaborative tool for productivity-enhancing tasks such as academic research, writing, and document editing. According to Hidetoshi Tojo, Representative Director and President of Anthropic in Japan, Japanese businesses view AI as a means to augment human capabilities—specifically creative problem-solving and nuanced communication—rather than replacing human judgment.

Several leading Japanese enterprises have demonstrated significant productivity gains using Claude:

• Rakuten: Utilizing Claude for autonomous coding projects to improve developer productivity.
• Nomura Research Institute: Reducing document analysis time from hours to minutes while maintaining precision.
• Panasonic: Integrating Claude across consumer applications and business operations.
• Classmethod: Reporting 10x productivity gains, with Claude Code generating 99% of a recent project's codebase.

Anthropic reports that its run rate revenue in the Asia-Pacific region has grown more than 10x over the past year.

Cultural Integration and Future Expansion

Anthropic has extended its partnership with the Mori Art Museum, collaborating on the upcoming exhibition Roppongi Crossing 2025: What Passes Is Time. We Are Eternal. This follows a previous collaboration on the MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art exhibition.

Following the launch of the Tokyo office, Anthropic plans to expand further into the Asia-Pacific region with upcoming offices in Seoul and Bengaluru.