Cognition sets up Singapore hub to lead Asia-Pacific expansion

Cognition has established Singapore as its Asia-Pacific headquarters, positioning the city-state as the base for its regional leadership, operations, and growth. The move follows the company’s recent expansion into Japan and comes as enterprises across Asia increase adoption of artificial intelligence in software development.

The company will run its APAC operations from Singapore, with responsibility for Southeast Asia and key markets including Australia, India, and South Korea. Its regional leadership team will be based locally, with a focus on driving market expansion and customer engagement.

Building regional capability from Singapore

Cognition’s expansion builds on its acquisition of Havana, a Singapore-based startup focused on AI agents. Havana’s team will be integrated into Cognition’s regional operations across engineering, product development, and go-to-market functions.

The APAC business will be led by Richard Spence, Vice President and General Manager, APAC. He will oversee regional strategy, customer relationships, and expansion efforts from Singapore.

“Singapore stands out as one of the most advanced markets globally for AI adoption, with strong national leadership and a highly engaged developer and user base,” said Richard Spence, Vice President and General Manager, APAC at Cognition. “Local initiatives such as the National AI Council and the widespread use of AI tools reflect how quickly AI is being embraced. By establishing our APAC hub here, we are able to work closely with our customers across the region as they navigate a fundamental shift in how software is built and operated.”

Cognition plans to open its Singapore office later this year in the Central Business District. Over the next two years, it will build a local team across engineering, operations, product, sales, and marketing. These teams will support regional go-to-market programmes, deployed engineering, research and development, and legal functions.

Enterprise focus centred on AI software development

Cognition develops Devin, an AI software engineer designed to work alongside human developers and autonomously complete complex engineering tasks. Its platform is positioned to support enterprise software development by improving development speed, code quality, and workflow automation while maintaining controls around compliance, security, and oversight.

The company is already working with enterprise customers in Singapore, including OCBC. The bank has deployed the platform within its engineering teams to support development workflows.

“OCBC is proudly Singapore’s longest-established bank and with this strategic partnership with Cognition, further reinforces our position as the most forward-looking and a thought leader in responsible, enterprise-grade AI adoption. While our investment in Cognition’s platform began within engineering, it has quickly delivered meaningful benefits across multiple parts of our organisation, including our business teams. We’ve seen initial productivity gains of up to 30%, but even more importantly, this collaboration empowers us to deliver superior products to our customers,” said Michael Chung, Head of Group Wealth Engineering at OCBC. “Given our progress so far and the competitive advantage we’ve achieved, we are confident that leveraging Devin and Windsurf will enable us to accelerate transformation at scale and continue creating lasting value for both our shareholders and customers.”

The Singapore hub is intended to support enterprise customers across the region with local engineering, research, and commercial teams, aligning with Cognition’s broader expansion across Asia.