Google DeepMind is setting up a new base in Singapore to promote the research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) and its real-world applications in the Asia-Pacific region. The artificial intelligence research lab said the move builds on its existing work in the region and has nearly doubled the size of its Asia-Pacific team over the past year.
A team of research scientists, software engineers and AI impact experts will conduct research and development work in key areas from the Singapore base, continuing DeepMind's fundamental research on language and cultural inclusion in the Asia-Pacific region, enhancing Gemini's core capabilities, and applying the latest models to Google products and cloud customers.
For those who don’t know much, Google DeepMind is the force behind popular artificial intelligence models such as Gemini, Veo, Imagen, Gemma, and Lyria. The Alphabet unit is headquartered in London and already has research labs in the United States, Canada, France, Germany and Switzerland.
The AI research lab will work directly with government agencies, businesses and academic institutions in the region. DeepMind's AlphaFold artificial intelligence program, which predicts protein structures, has been used by a team of researchers in Singapore to make breakthroughs in Parkinson's disease research and find ways to enable early diagnosis and targeted treatments.
DeepMind has partnered with GovTech Singapore and other agencies to test advanced agent artificial intelligence systems on Google's physically isolated cloud infrastructure, making the Singapore government the first in Asia to conduct such testing.
At the same time, its sister company Google is offering free Google AI Pro services to college students in Singapore for one year, allowing them to use the latest Gemini 3 Pro and Veo 3.1 models, unlimited image uploads for analysis, and 2TB of storage space, among many other benefits.
Google noted in the fine print that eligible students can sign up for free access before December 9. The search giant has taken a similar initiative in India, offering free Google AI Pro services to students for one and a half years.