OpenAI adds London office
OpenAI plans a new London site in King’s Cross with capacity for about 544 workers as part of an expansion of its UK workforce next year. The move reflects continued international office builds even as the company manages staged product rollouts and enterprise controls. (heraldscotland.com)
OpenAI plans to open its first permanent London office in King’s Cross in 2027, with room for 544 workers. (independent.co.uk) The company currently has about 200 staff in London, and said it wants to expand teams in research, engineering, customer support, policy, communications, marketing and sales. (standard.co.uk) The new site is in Regent Quarter, spanning Jahn Court and the Brassworks Building, in a King’s Cross cluster that already includes Google DeepMind, Meta, Synthesia and Wayve. (reuters.com) OpenAI first announced a London office in June 2023 and called it the company’s first international expansion. In July 2025, it said London had grown to more than 100 staff and that the United Kingdom was one of its top three markets for paid subscribers and application programming interface developers. (openai.com 1) (openai.com 2) The office move lands days after OpenAI paused its main United Kingdom data center project, citing an unfavorable regulatory environment and high energy costs. That pause cut against the British government’s push to build domestic artificial intelligence infrastructure. (reuters.com) OpenAI has still kept adding UK ties. In November 2025, it announced UK data residency for ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu and its application programming interface platform, alongside a Ministry of Justice agreement covering civil servants. (openai.com) The company also signed a memorandum of understanding with the UK government in July 2025 focused on public-service adoption, infrastructure development and technical information exchange. UK Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said then that artificial intelligence would be “fundamental” to driving growth. (openai.com) OpenAI said on March 31 that it had raised $122 billion to fund what it called the “next phase of AI,” giving it more room to add offices and staff even as it staggers some infrastructure bets. (openai.com) For London, the immediate change is concrete: a permanent King’s Cross base, a larger hiring footprint, and a 2027 opening date attached to OpenAI’s United Kingdom plans. (cnbc.com)
