This week, we opened our first Asia Pacific office in Tokyo, an important milestone in Anthropic’s international expansion. Our CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei traveled to Tokyo to meet with Prime Minister Takaichi, address members of the LDP Digitalization Headquarters Committee, meet with customers, and sign a memorandum of cooperation with the Japan AI Safety Institute. These actions deepen our partnership with Japanese government, businesses and cultural institutions.
“Technology and human progress are not in tension, but move forward together,” said Dario Amodei. “This principle, this Japanese notion of the purpose of technology, is at the heart of Anthropic. It’s the way we see the world and it’s why we view Japan as a vital hub for our company’s growth.”
Develop common standards for AI assessment
The development of AI transcends national borders. As these systems become more powerful, we need international cooperation on assessment standards – shared ways to assess capabilities, test systems and understand risks. This week, Anthropic signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Japan AI Safety Institute to collaborate on AI assessment methodologies and monitor emerging trends in the field.
This partnership builds on Anthropic’s collaboration with AI security institutes around the world, including formal agreements with the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) and ongoing work with the UK’s AI Security Institute. In November 2024, the US and UK institutes conducted their first joint evaluation of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, demonstrating how international organizations can advance the science of AI evaluation together.
Anthropic also joined the Hiroshima AI Process Friends Group this week, strengthening our commitment to the framework we signed in 2023 promoting safe, secure and trustworthy AI development globally while facilitating innovation.
Japan’s approach to AI adoption
“What we are seeing in Japan confirms our belief that the most successful AI deployments enhance human capabilities rather than replacing them,” said Hidetoshi Tojo, representative director and president of Anthropic in Japan. “Japanese companies understand that AI must enable people to focus on what humans do best: creative problem solving, nuanced communication, and building trusting relationships.”
Japan ranks in the top 25% globally in AI adoption, according to recent Anthropic Economic Index data. The Japanese are using AI as a collaborative tool to augment human capabilities, primarily for productivity-enhancing tasks such as academic research and document writing and editing, reflecting a focus on improving creativity and the quality of communication rather than replacing human judgment.
Leading Japanese companies are already seeing results. Rakuten uses Claude for stand-alone coding projects, significantly improving developer productivity. Nomura Research Institute has transformed document analysis from hours to minutes while maintaining accuracy. Panasonic integrated Claude into both commercial operations and consumer applications. And Class methoda leading cloud integrator, claims to have achieved 10x productivity gains, with Claude Code generating 99% of the code base for a recent project.
This week we also hosted our first Builder Summit in Tokyo, where we met over 150 startups and founders building with Claude. All of this reflects the extraordinary momentum we are seeing in the Asia-Pacific region, where our revenue has grown more than 10-fold over the past year.
Supporting the Japanese creative community
We also announced that we have expanded our partnership with the Mori Art Museum. We will work long term with the museum in several ways, including collaborating on the next exhibition Roppongi Crossing 2025: what passes is time. We are eternal. — the eighth edition in a series first launched in 2004 to provide a snapshot of the Japanese contemporary art scene at a given time. This follows our collaboration with the museum on the highly acclaimed MACHINE LOVE: Video games, AI and contemporary art exposure.
Look forward to
The people and organizations we met in Japan share our belief that technological progress must enable human progress. We are building a team in Tokyo to work alongside partners in industry, government and culture to achieve this goal. Over the coming months, we will apply the same approach in Seoul and Bangalore as we continue our expansion in Asia Pacific. We look forward to helping innovation thrive across the region.
For more information about career opportunities in our Tokyo office, click here.
