28 of the world's top AI firms are now hiring in Singapore — OpenAI leads the pack
Source: Tech in Asia
Singapore's push to become Asia's AI hub is showing real momentum. 28 of the world's 250 most valuable AI firms are actively recruiting in the city-state, with OpenAI alone posting 22 open positions from its Singapore office.
Singapore's ambition to become Asia's premier AI hub is translating into real hiring momentum. According to data from Tracxn, 28 of the world's 250 most valuable AI companies are actively recruiting in Singapore as of mid-May. OpenAI leads the charge with 22 open positions spanning deployment engineering, technical success, and marketing roles for the APAC region. The company opened its Singapore office in late 2024 and plans to grow the local team to around 50 people.
Other notable names hiring in Singapore include Alphabet's Google DeepMind, US autonomous vehicle firm Motional, voice AI startup ElevenLabs, and European model maker Mistral. Meanwhile, Anthropic and xAI are recruiting for smaller sets of roles, mostly in sales and support. China's emerging AI players — including Z.ai, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax — currently have no open positions in the city-state, though that could shift as Chinese AI models gain traction on global benchmarks.
Why it matters for Singapore: The data cuts through the rhetoric around Singapore's AI hub ambitions. Frontier AI labs vote with their hiring budgets, and the numbers show that Singapore is winning a meaningful share of global AI talent demand — especially from OpenAI, which is treating its Singapore base as a serious deployment and engineering hub, not just a sales outpost.