ChatGPT creator OpenAI has announced it will set up an office in Dublin as part of its European expansion.
The US firm, which is headquartered in San Francisco and employs 10 people in London, said on Thursday that its Irish office will give it easier access to the tech and startup ecosystem in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick, which have seen “impressive growth and advancement”.
“We’re ready to collaborate with the government to support their national AI strategy, as well as work with industry, startups and researchers to understand priorities and ideas for advancing AI development and deployment,” OpenAI says in a statement.
The decision comes three months after Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, toured Europe looking for the best location for a European office. He stopped in Spain, France, Poland, Germany and the UK, meeting the leaders of all five countries.
The Dublin office will be the first OpenAI set-up in the EU and will allow the company to comply with the EU’s upcoming Artificial Intelligence Act, which will require firms with EU-based users to have a presence in the bloc.
Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon told Reuters that the company will employ nine people across different teams at its Dublin office, which won’t be OpenAI’s European headquarters and won’t have an executive running it, for the time being.
“We like to grow deliberately and not too rapidly because we want to make sure that the culture of the company is established first in new offices before we scale up,” Kwon says.
Ireland’s Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Simon Coveney welcomed the decision, saying “companies such as OpenAI operating in Ireland can help build on our foundation to support emerging AI research and innovation, and ensure our workforce is well prepared”.
