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Why Enterprise AI Fails at Scale
Key Takeaways
- London will become OpenAI’s largest research hub outside the US.
- The UK team will own safety, reliability and portions of GPT-5.2 and Codex development.
- The move intensifies direct competition with Google DeepMind for British AI researchers.
OpenAI announced on Feb. 26, 2026, that it will make London its largest research hub outside the United States, citing the UK's technology ecosystem as ideal for developing new artificial intelligence systems. The move sets the scene for OpenAI to compete directly with Google DeepMind for British AI talent.
The company, which established a UK office in 2023, currently has over 30 employees in London. OpenAI did not disclose the size of investment or number of jobs the expansion would create.
The London team will continue contributing to products like Codex and GPT-5.2. The team will also take ownership of certain aspects of model development relating to safety, reliability and performance evaluation, the company said.
"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
Chief Research Officer, OpenAI
Table of Contents
- OpenAI’s UK Research Mandate
- OpenAI's Aggressive Expansion Strategy
- The AI Talent War Moves to London
- OpenAI at a Glance
OpenAI’s UK Research Mandate
The expansion brings OpenAI into direct competition with Google DeepMind for UK research talent. This latest expansion from OpenAI comes with clearly defined ownership across several critical components of OpenAI’s model lifecycle.
| Research Focus Area | London Team Responsibilities |
|---|---|
| Model development | Ongoing work on Codex and GPT-5.2 products |
| Safety research | Ownership of safety-related model development |
| Reliability evaluation | Performance and reliability assessment |
| Talent acquisition | Recruiting from leading British universities |
UK Technology Minister Liz Kendall called the expansion "a huge vote of confidence" that "reaffirms the UK's global leadership as the place to pursue AI innovation that is both safe and transformative."
Related Article: 5 Lessons From OpenAI’s Internal Data Agent Deployment
OpenAI's Aggressive Expansion Strategy
OpenAI has deployed billions in acquisitions and infrastructure partnerships to cement its enterprise AI leadership.
The company acquired Statsig for $1.1 billion in September of last year, bringing founder Vijaye Raji on as CTO of Applications and strengthening A/B testing and feature flagging capabilities.
Three months later, OpenAI acquired Neptune for under $400 million to enhance model governance, and acquired Multi to expand its enterprise application portfolio.
The company has also diversified its compute infrastructure through significant cloud and chip partnerships. Nvidia agreed to invest up to $100 billion and become OpenAI's key AI chip supplier starting in 2026. Additionally, OpenAI signed a $38 billion cloud contract with AWS for immediate GPU access.
The AI Talent War Moves to London
Major AI companies have seen major poaching and employee reshuffling amongst themselves, with companies offering hundreds of millions to secure top AI talent, sometimes exceeding $250 million per individual engineer.
The battle for talent has been seen most between Meta, Google (DeepMind), OpenAI and Apple, with AI teams being hired away in massive-multi-year deals. The talent market has been driven by a shortage of researchers and engineers capable of advancing generative AI.
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Former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive, for instance, joined OpenAI in 2025 after the company acquired his AI devices startup io through a $6.4 billion all-equity deal. More recently, former Anthropic AI safety research Dylan Scandinaro joined OpenAI as head of preparedness.
As Alexandru Voica, head of corporate affairs and policy at Nvidia-backed startup Synthesia put it, "If I’m going to spend a billion dollars to build a model, $10 million for an engineer is a relatively low investment."
Now the AI talent battleground expands to the UK, where AI firms will likely clash for claim over leading talent from the country's top scientific institutions.
OpenAI at a Glance
OpenAI, founded in 2015, develops artificial intelligence solutions for enterprise and public sector leaders. The company offers large language models, including the GPT series, and APIs for natural language processing, code generation and conversational AI.