Microsoft to open new AI hub in London

Months after creating the new Microsoft AI organisation to help advance their consumer AI products and research, including Copilot, the tech giant has now announced that it is opening a new AI hub in London, UK. According to the company, the new AI hub will drive pioneering work to "advance state-of-the-art language models and their supporting infrastructure, and to create world-class tooling for foundation models, collaborating closely with our AI teams across Microsoft and with our partners, including OpenAI."

The new AI hub will be led by Jordan Hoffmann, an AI scientist and engineer. Before joining Microsoft AI, Hoffmann distinguished himself as an AI pioneer at Inflection and DeepMind, based in London. Hoffmann will be joined by a group of Microsoft AI team members based in the company's London Paddington office. "There is an enormous pool of AI talent and expertise in the UK, and Microsoft AI plans to make a significant, long-term investment in the region as we begin hiring the best AI scientists and engineers into this new AI hub," the company said in a blogpost.

In the post, the tech giant also highlighted its recently announced 2.5 billion pound investment to upskill the UK workforce for the AI era and to build the infrastructure to power the AI economy, including its commitment to bring 20,000 of the most advanced GPUs to the country by 2026.