OpenAI said it will set up a new office in South Korea soon.
"As someone whose family's story is deeply tied to Korea, it was especially meaningful to announce today that we'll soon open an OpenAI office in Seoul," the company's chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, wrote in an X post on Monday local time.
Kwon said growth in ChatGPT's user base in South Korea has been "off the charts," and the number of weekly users in South Korea grew by 4.5 times last year.
South Korea has the highest number of paid ChatGPT subscribers outside the US, Kwon said.
OpenAI said in a statement to Business Insider that the company has "officially established an entity in Korea and has begun recruiting for roles to advance our work with key stakeholders in Korea." It added that further details about the office will be announced in the coming months.
The ChatGPT maker added that South Korea's high AI adoption rate stems from the country's "strong tech industry, culture of innovation across enterprise and academia, and appetite from the wider public for using AI tools in their daily lives."
To be sure, OpenAI has long been making inroads into Asia. In April 2024, the company announced that it had opened its first Asian office in Tokyo.
In October, the company said it would launch its second Asia office in Singapore.
The San Francisco-based company also has offices in Dublin, London, New York, Paris, Seattle, and Washington, DC. On Thursday, OpenAI announced the opening of its first German office in Munich.
