Writing in his bog, recent hire and Deepmind founder Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI London 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.”
The new AI hub will be based in Microsoft’s Paddington offices and will be led by AI scientist and engineer Jordan Hoffman. Hoffman’s credentials are top-notch, having honed his talents at Deepmind and Inflection.
Microsoft didn’t specify how many jobs the new AI hub would create. However, Suleyman’s post says the company will seek exceptional individuals to work on the most “challenging AI questions of our time.”
Microsoft announced late last year that it plans to spend €2.9 billion expanding AI data centre infrastructure in the UK. It plans to grow its data centre footprint across sites in London and Wales and potentially into the north of England.
While several tech companies, such as Apple, threatened to quit the UK last year, primarily due to regulations such as the Online Safety Bill, Microsoft is one of a growing list of tech companies that have set up AI units in London.
OpenAI established its first overseas office in London, while US firm C3.ai relocated its European headquarters from Paris to London.
However, it was only last July that Suleyman, pre-Microsoft, explained to the BBC why he was choosing to base Inflection AI in California, stating that the UK didn’t offer the same opportunities for growth as the US.
“I think the culture shift that it needs to make is more encouraging of large-scale investments and risk-taking and more tolerant and celebratory of failures,” he said.
“The truth is, the US market is not only huge but also more predisposed to big risk-taking, taking big shots and having big funding rounds.”
Microsoft CEO Brad Smith expressed discontent last year when the CMA held up the tech giant's acquisition of Activision. That was cleared last October, and since then, Microsoft has seemed more optimistic about the UK's potential as a home for AI innovation. Indeed, the UK’s universities and research institutions continue to be a rich source of AI engineering talent.
Suleyman said: “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 UK, and I’m excited to commit to the UK on behalf of Microsoft AI. Through my close work with thought leaders in the UK government, the business community and academia, I know that the country is committed to advancing AI responsibly and with a safety-first commitment to drive investment, innovation and economic growth.”