Why Olano is headquartered in Singapore

In this guide

• Where Olano is headquartered, in facts you can check
• Is Singapore an AI hub?
• Why Singapore suits an AI agent company
• Other AI companies that chose Singapore
• What we do from Singapore
• How to verify a Singapore AI company
• How Olano helps

Where is Olano headquartered?

In Singapore. The company behind olano.ai and olano.sg is Olano AI Pte. Ltd., incorporated in Singapore, and the registered office published in our Terms of Service is 160 Robinson Road, #14-04, Singapore 068914. Those Terms are governed by the laws of Singapore, with the courts of Singapore as the exclusive forum. That makes Olano an AI company in Singapore in the legal sense, not only in its marketing.

Olano is a Singapore-based AI company building the Olano platform, where teams of AI agents and people work together. Olano Studio, at olano.sg, is our Singapore-based implementation team, which designs, deploys and manages agent systems for clients. We work in Singapore hours, with teams in other regions too, because every system is deployed and managed remotely.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

We ran the first check on ourselves on 16 October 2026: ACRA's open data on data.gov.sg, queried through our own Singapore MCP, lists OLANO AI PTE. LTD., UEN 202442387K, as a live local company at 160 Robinson Road, #14-04. The checklist below applies the same checks to any Singapore AI company, us included.

Is Singapore an AI hub?

Yes, and the government says so in writing. The Ministry of Digital Development and Information's update to the National AI Strategy, announced on 20 May 2026, names building an AI hub as one of its three focus areas, with the aim of making Singapore "a more compelling place to develop, test, and scale AI solutions" and "a trusted hub for open exchange and substantive partnerships".

The structure behind that aim is specific. National AI Strategy 2.0 was launched by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in December 2023. A National AI Council, chaired by the Prime Minister, was established in February 2026. National AI Missions in advanced manufacturing, financial services, connectivity and healthcare were announced at Budget 2026. Over S$1 billion has been committed to public AI research and talent from 2025 to 2030, and Singapore will chair ASEAN in 2027. Our guide to the National AI Strategy update covers the parts that reach a small business.

That is the Singapore AI hub in practice. For an AI startup in Singapore, what matters is that it is written down, dated and specific: when a client asks what responsible deployment means here, there is a public document to point to.

Why is Singapore a good base for an AI agent company?

Because the hard questions for an agent company (who is accountable, where data goes, how customers are served) are ones Singapore has already answered in public guidance.

1. Governance that is written down

On 22 January 2026, Minister Josephine Teo launched IMDA's Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI at the World Economic Forum in Davos, described by the ministry as the first framework of its kind. It asks organisations to bound an agent's risks up front, define checkpoints where human approval is required, apply technical controls across the agent's lifecycle and keep end users informed. It is voluntary guidance, not a certification.

It describes the way we already build: in Olano, outbound messages, payments and public posts wait for a person by default, the riskiest actions keep waiting even in automatic modes, and every action is recorded in an audit trail. Our guide to the agentic AI framework maps it to practical controls.

2. Data rules businesses already work with

Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act, administered by the Personal Data Protection Commission, sets the baseline for how organisations collect, use and disclose personal data. An agent answering customer enquiries handles personal data from its first message. We are a Singapore organisation too, so the PDPA is not a foreign regime we translate for clients; it is the law we work under. Our PDPA and AI agents guide lists the questions to put to any vendor.

3. Support aimed at deployment, not headlines

Singapore funds AI work through instruments with real conditions attached. Budget 2025 set aside up to S$150 million for the Enterprise Compute Initiative, run by Digital Industry Singapore, which pairs established companies with a cloud provider and co-funds 70% of a consultant's fees, up to S$105,000, to build an AI minimum viable product. Budget 2026 added a 400% tax deduction on the first S$50,000 of qualifying AI expenditure for YA 2027 and YA 2028 under the Enterprise Innovation Scheme, according to IRAS. And the EDGE Grant became the single route for new business-grant applications on 30 September 2026.

Each asks a business to name a workflow and a measurable result before it spends, which is the conversation we want to have anyway. Olano is not a pre-approved vendor, does not apply on a client's behalf and never promises a grant outcome; GoBusiness and Enterprise Singapore publish the authoritative figures.

4. A multilingual market at the centre of Southeast Asia

Customers in Singapore write to a business in the language they are comfortable in, on WhatsApp, Telegram or email, and expect an answer in kind. Our agents answer in the customer's language, across the 12 languages the platform lists. Multilingual work is ordinary here: one of the case studies from Digital Industry Singapore's Enterprise Compute Initiative pilot applies "multilingual, multimodal AI" to container depot operations.

Singapore also sits at the centre of Southeast Asia. For companies expanding across the region, including from China, we have written up how one agent team serves several markets at once.

Which AI companies have chosen Singapore?

Several. Two examples with public records:

• Manus, the general-purpose AI agent company founded in China, moved its headquarters to Singapore in mid-2025, as CNBC reported. Meta's acquisition of Manus, announced on 29 December 2025, was later blocked by China's National Development and Reform Commission and unwound in 2026, as Fintech News Singapore reported. The details are in Manus AI and Singapore.
• The cloud providers. Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Oracle each run an Enterprise Compute Initiative programme for Singapore-based companies, listed on Digital Industry Singapore's provider page, and Oracle's AI Customer Excellence Center is in Singapore, according to its announcement of 26 January 2026.

The lesson for buyers: a Singapore address tells you where a company is incorporated, not who controls it, who operates its systems or where its data is processed. Hence the checklist below.

What does Olano do from Singapore?

Olano Studio engagements. We build the platform, and the studio implements it: it maps how the work runs today, designs the agent system, connects it to the client's tools, builds custom integrations where none exist, launches with approvals in place, trains the team, then monitors and improves the system. Scoping ends in a fixed proposal before any work begins, studio prices are quoted in Singapore dollars excluding GST, and nothing is priced per seat. The six services an engagement is built from are on our services page.

Singapore MCP, in the open. We publish Singapore MCP, an open-source MCP server under the MIT licence with 291 read-only tools over Singapore's public data from data.gov.sg, OneMap, LTA DataMall and SingStat. Anyone can try it with nothing installed through the @OlanoSGBot Telegram bot or on WhatsApp at +65 8905 1632. Both bots are hosted by Olano on a server in Singapore, although composing a reply sends message content to a third-party language-model provider that may process it outside Singapore. It is an independent community project, not affiliated with the Singapore Government.

Where client systems run. Each client's system runs in its own isolated environment on managed cloud infrastructure. Where data has to stay in a particular country or region, a bespoke engagement can deploy into a custom AWS or GCP region, or into a cloud or VPC the client controls, and the client decides which model providers handle which tasks.

Who we work with. Every system is deployed and managed remotely, so the same team serves clients in other regions; our FAQ covers how.

How do you verify a Singapore AI company?

Check the record, then the system. Seven checks, with our own answers so you can test them on us first.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Spend the most time on check five: data can be stored in one country while the model call, credentials and logs sit elsewhere, as we explain in where your agents actually run. Check seven is the one IMDA's agentic framework puts at the centre.

How Olano helps

If you are choosing a Singapore AI company to build an agent system, start with a consultation. We look at how the work runs today, tell you whether an agent is the right answer, and quote the build as a fixed proposal before anything starts. What we will not do: claim pre-approved vendor status, apply for a grant on your behalf, or promise a funding outcome. How to choose a Singapore AI studio explains the four kinds of firm that use the label, including when you do not need one.