Jeff Bezos in talks to open AI lab in London: report
Key Points
- Jeff Bezos’s AI lab, Project Prometheus, is negotiating a 38,000 sq ft lease for three floors in London’s King’s Cross.
- OpenAI is establishing its first permanent UK headquarters in King’s Cross with 88,500 sq ft, set to open in 2027 for up to 544 staff.
- King’s Cross is becoming a major AI hub, home to Google DeepMind’s new Platform 37 headquarters and Meta’s two large offices.
- The neighbourhood hosts AI firms Synthesia and Wayve, plus research institutions including UCL, Francis Crick Institute, and Alan Turing Institute.
- London’s King’s Cross attracts AI talent from top universities and proximity to policymakers in the Knowledge Quarter.
Jeff Bezos’s AI lab is in talks to take office space at King’s Cross in London, the Financial Times reports.
Project Prometheus is discussing signing a lease in King’s Cross for three floors spanning 38,000 sq ft, according to people familiar with the matter.
Bezos’s lab is focused on AI that can understand the physical world and transform engineering and manufacturing. It recently closed a $10 billion fundraising round from investors.
Earlier this month, OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed creator of ChatGPT, announced it had secured its first permanent office in the UK, committing to a sprawling 88,500-square-foot space in London’s King’s Cross neighbourhood.
The new headquarters, set to open in 2027, will have capacity for up to 544 team members, more than double the company’s current London headcount of around 200.
Occupation is slated for 2027, with space for up to 544 team members across research, engineering, policy, commercial, and support roles. That’s more than double OpenAI’s existing London team of roughly 200 people, including about 30 researchers already based there.
Google DeepMind already calls the neighbourhood home. Its teams are preparing to move into Platform 37, Google’s £1 billion purpose-built European headquarters next to King’s Cross station, named after the famous “Move 37” from DeepMind’s AlphaGo victory.
The building will house AI researchers, engineers, and ethicists, with a public “AI Exchange” space for exhibitions and education.
Meta operates two major offices in King’s Cross Central, including the landmark 11-21 Canal Reach building, and a second at Lewis Cubitt Square. The social-media giant has poured hundreds of millions into the area, drawn by the same mix of talent, transport links, and regeneration that’s transforming the former industrial zone.
The list of neighbours reads like an AI who ’s-who. Homegrown stars Synthesia and Wayve, plus research powerhouses including University College London (UCL), the Francis Crick Institute, and the Alan Turing Institute.
While compute-heavy projects like data centres face headwinds from energy prices and planning delays, the real bottleneck in AI is talent. London and its surrounding universities produce a steady stream of top machine-learning researchers.
Proximity to policymakers in Westminster and the collaborative ecosystem of the Knowledge Quarter make the capital uniquely attractive for companies that want to shape, and be shaped by, responsible AI development.
The expansion is expected to create hundreds of high-skilled jobs in everything from frontier model research to startup support and safety teams. It also intensifies what one analyst called a “talent arms race,” with sky-high salaries and equity packages now table stakes for retaining top researchers who might otherwise head to Silicon Valley or stay in academia.
