Choi Ki-young, the former head of Snowflake's Korea operations, has been appointed the first country head of Anthropic Korea. (Anthropic) Anthropic, the US developer of the Claude AI model and a chief rival to OpenAI, said Wednesday it has appointed Choi Ki-young, former head of Snowflake's Korea operations, as the first country head of its Korean unit ahead of the formal opening of a Seoul office.Senior executives will visit Seoul within weeks to establish the office and meet major corporate customers. Anthropic registered its Korean entity, Anthropic Korea, in July 2025.Choi brings more than 30 years of experience in the technology industry across Korea and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Before Snowflake, he headed the Korean businesses of Google Cloud, Adobe and Autodesk, and served as chief operating officer at Microsoft Korea.The Seoul team will focus on building partnerships with companies and startups, cooperating with government and research institutions and supporting the local developer community.Choi said he would set a strategy tailored to how Claude is actually used in Korea, and pointed to industry-specific platforms as Anthropic's main edge over rivals such as OpenAI, Google and Amazon Web Services. He cited the company's May 13 launch of Claude for Small Business, a package that automates routine work such as payroll and invoicing for firms without dedicated IT staff.Korea ranks among the heaviest users of Claude relative to its size. Anthropic's Economic Index report published in March found Korean usage running about 3.5 times higher than the country's population would predict, with particular strength in technical and creative work.Adoption is already visible among Korean firms. Legal-tech startup Law&Company built a Claude-based assistant that cuts lawyers' research and drafting time, while SK Telecom uses Claude in a custom customer-service model.By payment volume, Claude held a 31.7 percent share of Korea's generative AI market in the first quarter, trailing ChatGPT's 48.5 percent, according to investment platform Epic AI. Separate WiseApp data put Claude's monthly active users at 2.41 million in April, third behind ChatGPT and Gemini.The appointment sharpens a contest already underway in Korea's enterprise AI market, where OpenAI established a local entity earlier and named a former Google Korea head to run it."Korea is one of the markets with the highest interest in Claude globally," said Chris Ciauri, Anthropic's managing director of international. He added that few people understand Korea's technology ecosystem as deeply as Choi.