OpenAI Declares London Its Largest Research Hub Outside the US

When OpenAI opened its first international office in London back in 2023, it was a modest operation—a foothold in a city already dominated by Google’s DeepMind. Three years later, that foothold has become a beachhead. This week, the ChatGPT developer announced it would make London its largest research hub outside the United States, transforming a team of roughly 30 researchers into the vanguard of its global expansion.

The move doesn’t just represent growth. It signals the opening of a new front in one of the most expensive talent wars the technology industry has ever seen.

“We are excited to establish London as a major research hub for OpenAI, building on the leading work our London team is already doing to support our latest breakthroughs.” — Mark Chen, Chief Research Officer, OpenAI

A $1 Million-Per-Engineer Arms Race

The expansion sets up a direct confrontation with DeepMind, which currently employs around 2,000 people in the UK and has long been the undisputed center of British AI research. Mark Chen, OpenAI’s chief research officer, didn’t mince words about the company’s intentions: he acknowledged that OpenAI has already recruited staff from DeepMind and expects to continue doing so.

The weapons in this war are compensation packages that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Senior AI engineers at major London labs can now command total packages worth well over £1 million, combining salary, bonuses, and equity. In the United States, the numbers are even more staggering—reports suggest Meta has offered some researchers compensation approaching $100 million to join its AI efforts.

OpenAI has advantages beyond cash. As a private company, it can offer equity stakes that could appreciate dramatically if the firm eventually goes public. It has also facilitated secondary share sales, allowing employees to monetize part of their holdings before any IPO. Chen promised compensation would remain “very competitive,” adding the understated assessment: “AI talent is very valuable and we need to be competitive everywhere.”

The Culture Pitch

Money isn’t the only battleground. Chen emphasized OpenAI’s “bottom-up” research culture as a key differentiator—one he contrasted with Google’s approach.

Research autonomy is central to OpenAI’s pitch. Chen described the company as “famously a bottom-up lab” where researchers are encouraged to pursue their own lines of inquiry and potentially turn those into “company-level bets.” The implication was clear: Google’s approach, by comparison, is “slightly more top-down.”

Frontier ownership is what London researchers are being promised. Staff in the city will “own key components” of OpenAI’s frontier AI research, including work on safe model development. London-based researchers are already contributing to products including Codex and GPT-5.2—meaning the hub isn’t just a satellite office, but a genuine center of gravity for the company’s most important work.

The talent pool is what drew OpenAI to London in the first place. The company cited the UK’s “unique concentration of world-class talent across machine learning and the sciences as well as its strong culture of cross-disciplinary collaboration” as key reasons for the expansion.

“The UK brings together world-class talent and leading scientific institutions and universities, making it an ideal place to deliver the important research which will ensure our AI is safe, useful and benefits everyone.” — Mark Chen

AI Agents and the Step Change

The timing of the announcement isn’t coincidental. Chen described recent advances in AI agents—autonomous software capable of executing tasks with limited human supervision—as a “step change” for the industry.

“Something is happening in AI that feels like a step change,” Chen said. “We’ve reached a level where we can rely on agents and use them in real-world workflows.” He described how researchers can now delegate experiment execution to AI systems, returning to interpret results and refine hypotheses—a workflow that could reshape not only research roles but broader “analyst-style” professions.

However, Chen was careful to note the limitations. “Agents cannot ideate and come up with the experimental design itself,” he cautioned. Human oversight remains essential, even as the capabilities of autonomous systems expand.

The comments come amid what Chen acknowledged as a shift in “external perception of AI” toward a “more negative direction.” Recent essays questioning the pace and implications of AI development have circulated widely, contributing to volatility in technology markets. Chen argued that many practical applications—particularly in productivity and research—remain underappreciated. “There are many positive uses of agents,” he said. “That’s something we as an industry need to underscore.”

The Geopolitical Stakes

The expansion carries significance beyond the corporate rivalry. UK political leaders have seized on the announcement as validation of their efforts to position Britain as a global AI powerhouse.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall called the move “a huge vote of confidence in the UK’s world-leading position at the cutting edge of AI research” that “reaffirms the UK’s global leadership as the place to pursue AI innovation that is both safe and transformative.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was “delighted that OpenAI is anchoring its major new research hub here,” citing the capital’s academic institutions and tech ecosystem as natural foundations for the next wave of AI innovation.

Yet challenges remain. Recent data from RSM UK showed applications from overseas tech workers seeking UK visas fell 11 percent quarter-on-quarter, even as ministers pledge to fast-track AI specialists and reimburse visa fees. The talent pipeline that OpenAI and DeepMind both depend on may be narrowing just as the competition for that talent reaches its peak.

For now, London finds itself at the center of a global race where research talent, equity incentives, and cultural positioning matter as much as computing power. With OpenAI committing to scale up its presence and DeepMind defending its home turf, the city’s AI ecosystem is about to become even more intense—and expensive.

This article was reported by the ArtificialDaily editorial team. For more information, visit City AM and Business Magazine.