OpenAI has signed a lease for its first permanent London office, expanding its physical presence in the United Kingdom. The company said the new site will hold more than 500 team members and support its growing local workforce. The move follows OpenAI’s earlier decision to make London its largest research hub outside the United States. The move comes as OpenAI updates UK infrastructure plans and discloses fresh financing details.
OpenAI expands London footprint with larger office plan
OpenAI said on Monday that it had signed a lease for an 88,500-square-foot office in London. The company said the site will become its first permanent office in the city. It added that the office will support more than 500 team members as operations expand. The company currently employs about 200 people in London, according to the announcement. OpenAI said in February that it would make London its biggest research hub outside of the United States.
The new office gives the company room to grow its research, engineering, and operational teams in one location. Phoebe Thacker, OpenAI’s London site lead, described the city as a strong base for expansion. “The UK has an incredible depth of talent and a strong track record in AI,” Thacker said. She added that London already serves as a key hub for OpenAI’s research and teams. Thacker also said the new office would provide space for continued hiring and development.
“London is already a key hub for our research and teams, and this new office gives us the space to keep building here,” she said.
The announcement places the office opening within OpenAI’s broader UK hiring and research strategy. The office plan also gives OpenAI a larger long-term base in a market it has prioritized this year. London has become the company’s main international research center outside its home market. The new lease formalizes that position with a permanent site and a larger capacity target.
Recap: The stargate UK pause that continues to shadow OpenAI’s plans
As we had reported earlier, OpenAI’s UK data center project pause has continued to shape its wider plans. According to our report, the company paused Stargate UK, a multi-billion-pound project in north-east England. OpenAI said energy costs and regulation must improve before it makes durable infrastructure investments. The Stargate UK plan included a large facility at Cobalt Park in North Tyneside. It also included access to thousands of advanced chips through partnerships with Nvidia and Nscale.
OpenAI had linked the project to a wider £31 billion technology investment package in Britain. An OpenAI spokesperson told the BBC that the company still sees “huge potential” in the UK’s AI future. The spokesperson also said London remains OpenAI’s largest international research hub. OpenAI added that it will move forward when energy costs and regulations support long-term investment. When OpenAI announced Stargate UK, it tied the plan to sovereign compute capacity in Britain.
The company also said the project would support native AI development in the country. Those statements aligned the plan with the UK’s AI Opportunities Action Plan and broader economic goals. The project pause has kept pressure on the UK government’s technology agenda. Ministers have promoted AI and data centers as growth drivers and cited more than £100 billion in private investment. A government spokesperson said officials will keep working with OpenAI and other firms to expand UK compute capacity.
OpenAI secures $122 billion in fresh capital to expand AI infrastructure
These new developments are coming as OpenAI gears up its funding. According to an announcement made late last month, OpenAI closed its latest funding round with $122 billion in committed capital. The company said the round valued OpenAI at $852 billion on a post-money basis. Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank anchored the round as strategic partners. It also said Microsoft continued to participate with other long-term and new institutional backers.
SoftBank co-led the round with a16z, D.E. Shaw Ventures, MGX, TPG, and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. OpenAI has raised more than $3 billion from individual investors through bank channels. ARK Invest will include OpenAI in several exchange-traded funds. The revolving credit facility has expanded to about $4.7 billion and is left undrawn at close. ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly active users and over 50 million subscribers.
Additionally, OpenAI said that the enterprise now contributes more than 40% of revenue and could match consumers by late 2026. Its APIs process more than 15 billion tokens each minute. OpenAI also linked the funding round to product and infrastructure growth across ChatGPT, Codex, and enterprise tools. The company said it recently launched GPT-5.4 and expanded memory, search, personalization, and multimodal features. It also said it now works across cloud, chip, and data center partners as demand grows.