OpenAI, Nvidia, KPMG Among 70+ Global Giants With AI Centres in Singapore

Singapore now hosts more than 70 artificial intelligence centres of excellence, with global names from OpenAI to KPMG planting flags in the city-state as part of a broader push to turn the country into a hub for applied AI. The tally, tracked by the Singapore Government Partnerships Office, underscores a quiet but accelerating migration of AI talent and investment into Southeast Asia's most wired economy.

The list of companies with dedicated AI facilities in Singapore reads like a who's who of the tech and consulting world. OpenAI opened its first overseas applied AI lab here in May with a $300 million commitment and plans to hire over 200 forward-deployed engineers through a training pipeline backed by the Ministry of Digital Development and Information. Nvidia set up an embodied AI research lab — its second in Asia-Pacific — focusing on robotics and autonomous vehicles, aligned with the Punggol Digital District's multi-operator robot testbed. KPMG established a Trusted Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence supported by the EDB, complete with an assessment tool that helps companies decide when and whether to deploy AI.

Other major players rounding out the list include Mastercard, which opened its largest Asia-Pacific innovation space here and debuted Mastercard Agent Pay for biometric-authenticated AI agent purchases; Sea Group, which is using its AI centre of excellence to improve e-commerce models for Southeast Asian languages; and Singtel, which teamed up with Nvidia on a centre of excellence for applied AI. Even agriculture player Japfa has gotten in on the action, setting up an AI and quantum computing centre with SIT and Nanyang Polytechnic to tackle food production challenges. Google DeepMind's research lab, which arrived in November 2025, is also working with AI Singapore on Project Aquarium to improve language models for regional dialects.

What's striking is the breadth. These aren't just sales offices with an AI sticker on the door — they're genuine R&D and deployment hubs. Temus, the Temasek-backed digital services firm, is hiring 50 AI professionals for its local AI foundry and has already built an agentic AI assistant for an investment company. Razer's AI centre of excellence is hiring 150 engineers and has a QA Companion tool in beta with over 50 game studios. The concentration of applied AI work happening within Singapore's borders now touches finance, logistics, gaming, agriculture, public services, and security.

Why it matters for Singapore: The 70-centre milestone signals that Singapore's bet on being a neutral, well-regulated sandbox for AI deployment is paying off. These centres create high-value jobs, deepen the local talent pool through training programmes, and embed Singapore into the global AI supply chain in a way that's harder to relocate than a regional HQ. For the companies involved, Singapore offers rule of law, IP protection, and proximity to a fast-growing Southeast Asian market — a combination that's increasingly rare and increasingly valuable as geopolitical tensions reshape tech supply chains.