OpenAI inks London lease
OpenAI signed a lease for its first permanent London office in King’s Cross and plans to open the site in 2027. The space covers about 88,500 sq ft, is sized for roughly 544 staff, and the company has signalled plans to expand its UK research footprint there (reuters.com, Property Week, Business Matters).
OpenAI has signed a lease for its first permanent London office, planting a long-term base in King’s Cross with an opening planned for 2027. (reuters.com) The company is taking about 88,500 square feet at Regent Quarter, across Jahn Court and the Brassworks Building, with room for roughly 544 staff. Property Week reported the site is expected to open next year. (propertyweek.com) OpenAI already has about 200 employees in London, according to CNBC, so the new office is sized to more than double its current headcount in the city. King’s Cross also puts the company near other artificial intelligence groups including Google DeepMind, Meta, Synthesia and Wayve. (cnbc.com) The move turns a London outpost announced in June 2023 into a permanent campus-scale operation. When OpenAI launched that office, it called London its first international expansion and said local teams would focus on research, engineering and go-to-market work. (openai.com) OpenAI has spent the past year tying itself more closely to Britain. In July 2025, the company and the United Kingdom government announced a memorandum of understanding on artificial intelligence adoption, infrastructure and technical information exchange, and OpenAI said Britain was one of its top three markets for paid subscribers and application programming interface developers. (openai.com) The lease also lands days after OpenAI stepped back from a separate United Kingdom infrastructure plan. Business Matters said the company had scrapped its proposed Tyneside data centre project, known as Stargate UK, after high energy costs and grid connection delays. (bmmagazine.co.uk) That leaves two tracks in view at once: slower progress on power-hungry computing infrastructure, and faster expansion for research and product teams in central London. Reuters reported the company has signalled that the site will support a bigger United Kingdom research footprint. (reuters.com) For now, the clearest date is 2027. By then, OpenAI’s London presence is set to shift from a rented foothold to a permanent address built for hundreds of employees. (propertyweek.com)
