Microsoft announced that it is starting a new hub in the heart of London.
Takeaway points
- Microsoft announced that it is starting a new artificial intelligence hub in the heart of London.
- The new AI hub in London will drive pioneering work to advance state-of-the-art language models by collaborating with their teams and partners, such as OpenAI.
- Microsoft’s recently announced £2.5 billion investment to upskill the U.K. workforce for the AI era
The New Microsoft AI Hub in London
In a blog post on Sunday, Microsoft announced that it is starting a new artificial intelligence hub in the heart of London. According to the report, the new AI hub in London will drive pioneering work to advance state-of-the-art language models by collaborating with their teams and partners, such as OpenAI.
The new AI hub will be led by Jordan Hoffmann, co-founder of DeepMind, who is based in London. Other Microsoft AI team members based in the London Paddington office will join Hoffmann.
Jordan Hoffmann, the leader of the new AI hub, said in a statement that he is happy to be part of this project and that he hopes to advance AI responsibly and with a safety-first commitment with the U.K. government and more.
“This is great news for Microsoft AI and for the U.K. As a British citizen, born and raised in London, I’m proud to have co-founded and built a cutting-edge AI business here. I’m deeply aware of the extraordinary talent pool and AI ecosystem in the U.K., and I’m excited to make this commitment to the U.K. on behalf of Microsoft AI. I know – through my close work with thought leaders in the U.K. government, business community and academia – that the country is committed to advancing AI responsibly and with a safety-first commitment to drive investment, innovation and economic growth. Our decision to open this hub in the U.K. reflects this ambition,” Jordan said.
Why did Microsoft choose to open a new AI hub in London?
Microsoft said the U.K. has a large number of AI talents and expertise, and Microsoft AI plans to make a significant, long-term investment in the region as they start to hire the best AI scientists and engineers for this new AI hub.
In the coming weeks and months, Microsoft will start posting job openings and recruiting exceptional individuals who want to work on the most interesting and challenging AI questions of our time. The company mentioned some of the qualities that they are looking for in an applicant. They said they are looking for individuals who are driven by impact at scale, and who are passionate innovators eager to contribute to a team culture where continuous learning is the norm.
Microsoft has already established a presence in the U.K. with the Microsoft Research Cambridge lab, which is home to some of the foremost researchers in the areas of AI, cloud and productivity and the Microsoft AI London hub will add to their existing presence. According to the report, Microsoft’s recently announced £2.5 billion investment to upskill the U.K. workforce for the AI era and to build the infrastructure to power the AI economy includes their commitment to bring 20,000 of the most advanced GPUs to the country by 2026.
On March 19, 2024, Microsoft announced that Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan are joining Microsoft to form a new organization called Microsoft AI. Microsoft AI will focus on advancing Copilot and our other consumer AI products and research.
According to Microsoft, Mustafa will be EVP and CEO of Microsoft AI and will also join the senior leadership team (SLT). Karén is joining this group as Chief Scientist, reporting to Mustafa.
