Today, OpenAI announced the appointment of a new International Expansion Lead, Oliver Jay.
Jay brings a wealth of experience, having previously built sales teams at Dropbox and served on the board of ride-hailing service Grab in Asia, most recently as Chief Revenue Officer at Asana. He will now oversee OpenAI's strategy and operations in international markets.
Simultaneously, OpenAI also announced plans to establish an Asia-Pacific office in Singapore, serving as the hub for its operations in the region. Earlier this year, OpenAI opened its first Asian office in Tokyo. The Singapore office is expected to open by the end of this year, with the recent $6.4 billion funding undoubtedly providing a boost to this goal.
At the Singapore Tech Week conference, OpenAI's Asia-Pacific Policy Lead, Sandy Kunvatanagarn, stated: "We look forward to collaborating with business partners and governments to drive our development here, which is a significant first step in our commitment to Singapore and the entire Asia." She further noted that a key task for the Singapore team is to develop local language datasets through partnerships.
Kunvatanagarn emphasized that Asia is one of the most linguistically diverse regions in the world, and fluent natural language expression is crucial for OpenAI's products. She indicated that these datasets will be made available to researchers and other developers.
Despite many users not yet fully proficient with ChatGPT, OpenAI has already signed millions of business and commercial partnerships. OpenAI is banking on the recently released o1 model to enhance demand for its products. Kunvatanagarn referred to the o1 family model as a "game-changer" in the Q&A session, noting its use of "chain-of-thought" technology aimed at generating more accurate outputs.
Safety was another key topic highlighted at the conference. Kunvatanagarn pointed out that OpenAI rigorously evaluates its products to ensure user trust. "If people don't believe these models and products are safe, they won't trust them and won't be able to use them effectively," she said.
The priority for the Singapore office is to closely collaborate with developers, governments, and business partners. Kunvatanagarn mentioned that many governments have already laid out excellent development blueprints.
Key Points:
🌏 OpenAI appoints Oliver Jay as International Expansion Lead and sets Singapore as its Asia-Pacific headquarters.
💡 The Singapore team will focus on developing local language datasets to cater to Asia's linguistic diversity.
🔒 OpenAI emphasizes safety, committed to gaining user trust through rigorous evaluation.