London landlords can smell another tech land grab. Jeff Bezos’s artificial intelligence lab is in talks to take office space at King’s Cross, the latest sign AI firms want a bigger UK footprint.
Project Prometheus is discussing signing a lease at the Jellicoe Building for three floors spanning 38,000 sq ft, according to people familiar with the matter.
Bezos’s lab is focused on AI that can understand the physical world and transform engineering and manufacturing, and it recently closed a $10bn fundraising round at a $38bn valuation.
AI-led companies are forecast to take up as much as 4mn sq ft of office space in London by 2033, up from 1.5mn sq ft now, according to new research from real estate adviser CBRE.
That would amount to 43 per cent of all the unleased space currently under development in central London, according to the data.
Anthropic recently signed a lease for 158,000 sq ft at One Triton Square, owned by British Land. Rival OpenAI, which currently has about 200 employees in London, took 88,500 sq ft at Regent Quarter in King’s Cross, a space that can accommodate up to 544 people.
Demand over the past six to 12 months has been strong after a couple of quiet years in the tech sector, according to British Land’s head of campuses, Michael Wiseman. British Land head of campuses Michael Wiseman said: “You don’t have to see many of those businesses coming over for it to be a really positive story for London.”
Smaller outfits are grabbing space early so they can grow into it when needed, according to CBRE UK’s Mike Gedye.
Gedye told the Financial Times: “What’s notable compared to previous cycles is the speed of growth. They may be landing and taking 15 or 20 seats in a co-working space, but within 12 to 18 months, they’ve scaled into traditional offices and are taking more and more footprint.” Gedye said.
Scale AI, which initially had a site in Soho, announced in January that it would locate its international headquarters at 2 Pancras Square with 11,000 sq ft, nearly four times its original space.
AI companies have been drawn to the stretch between Paddington and King’s Cross, with plenty heading further east into Shoreditch and south of the Thames. AI company ServiceNow will take slightly more than 50,000 sq ft at EDGE London Bridge, a new building set to be completed later this year.
AI-related customers now comprise nearly 12 per cent of landlord GPE’s total office portfolio and more than a quarter of its “fully managed” flexible workspaces.
GPE pre-let more than 52,000 sq ft at the Delft, a building under construction near Borough Market, to Quantexa, a data, analytics and AI software company.
GPE chief executive Toby Courtauld said that despite fears of an AI bubble puncturing, he believed demand was unlikely to slow any time soon, given the need for “high value locations”.
