Over roughly a decade, London’s Kings Cross has become one of the world’s leading AI districts, after being one of the capital’s most notorious neighborhoods more than 20 years ago. British startups are now competing to secure offices in the area, to the extent that one venture-capital firm is said to have won a deal after promising a founder it would help secure office space there, although the firm declined to confirm or deny the story.
The major transformation began in 2016, when DeepMind, which Google had recently acquired, moved to the area. AI startups soon followed, seeking proximity to the talent and expertise attracted by the company, as well as the benefits of the growing cluster.
An Area Bringing Companies and Talent Together
The area is known in London as the “Knowledge Quarter,” and includes names such as OpenAI, Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Cusp AI, Wayne and Recursive, as well as Synthesia and Anthropic nearby. The European Technology Network has also moved into a new nearby office, while University College London is just around the corner.
Kings Cross’s appeal is not limited to technology companies. Property development has been accompanied by restaurants and cafés such as Hoppers and BAO, while the railway station’s location provides access to Cambridge in roughly 45 minutes to attract talent, and to Paris in two hours to conduct deals. This network of transport links, academic institutions and companies makes the area suitable for companies seeking to expand within Britain and abroad.
The source compares Kings Cross with the AI hubs of San Francisco and Beijing. This characterization is based on the scale of activity accumulated in the area, rather than on the presence of a single dominant company.
Rising Demand for Offices
London has around 3,600 AI startups, and together they have raised approximately $12.1 billion out of the $14.8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom data. Since the beginning of June, AI companies have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to Knight Frank.
This demand has driven prime rents in Kings Cross up by 18% over the past three years, according to Chris Dunn, a commercial insights employee at Knight Frank. The figure covers the largest leases, which encompass at least 10,000 square feet, such as the agreements signed by OpenAI and Prometheus. Smaller leases are signed, according to Dunn, at higher prices, while the vacancy rate for conventional offices has fallen to just 0.9%.
BioCorteX, a portfolio company of Hoxton Ventures, moved from Holborn to the Jellicoe Building in Kings Cross around 18 months ago in order to be closer to this activity. Its co-founder, Nik Sharma, said the presence of major cloud-computing companies, or what he described as the arrival of several “cloud giants,” increases London’s appeal. Prometheus, the AI company owned by Jeff Bezos, is said to be in talks to move to the Jellicoe Building, but the source presents this as an unconfirmed report.
Europe’s Question over Technological Sovereignty
The discussion in Kings Cross is not only about property and jobs, but also about Europe’s ability to own its AI capabilities. Anthropic’s suspension of access to its Mythos and Fable services during the summer served as a wake-up call for some people working in the ecosystem, according to Saul Klein, co-founder of venture-capital firm Phoenix Court.
Robin Klein, the firm’s co-founder, said the incident was a limited but sharp reminder that Europe cannot simply rent its AI capabilities and computing power; it needs to build and retain some of them. He added that the larger question is whether Britain will build the infrastructure, computing capacity, energy and capital necessary to make self-reliance sustainable, rather than merely hosting branches of American laboratories.
Phoenix Court’s portfolio includes three companies near Kings Cross: Olix, which recently announced a valuation of $3.3 billion, Early Health and CoMind. The presence of these companies in the area reflects the belief that the cluster provides not only offices, but also brings companies closer to investors, employees and potential partners.
Talent and the Ability to Remain in London
Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, believes his company’s London office is currently growing faster than its San Francisco office. In his view, London no longer appears to be a city trying to catch up with other centers, but has become one of the default destinations for founding a serious AI company.
Wayve provides an example of this shift. The company, founded in 2017 by its co-founder Alex Kendall, moved to Kings Cross in 2018 in search of space that could also function as a car garage, a rare combination in central London. Kendall said that founding an advanced AI company from London was an unusual choice 10 years ago, whereas today it seems an obvious one. He believes a startup can remain in London, raise substantial capital, hire global talent and compete internationally.
Near Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office are Sierra, which specializes in building AI agents, and AI-powered video platform Synthesia. Synthesia moved into a new building a year ago to accommodate the growth of its team. Laura Gonzalez Florez, the company’s chief people officer, said the area’s proximity to the airport and investors was one of the reasons it chose the location.
However, Synthesia does not rely solely on the local labor market; around two-thirds of its engineers work remotely, giving it access to a broader, diverse and less expensive international talent pool, from Slovenia to Portugal.
This growth has in turn led to a war for talent. AI job postings in Britain have risen sharply in recent years, according to PwC data. When Anthropic announced its move to London earlier this year, it offered between £260,000 and £630,000 for a machine-learning research engineer, while the average salary for the same role in London is approximately £102,000. This is forcing some British founders to raise larger funding rounds at a faster pace to retain their employees.
The real test, according to Zain Ali, founder of Kings Cross-based AI legal company Centuro, is whether globally significant AI companies will be founded, funded and scaled from Britain while it continues to attract the world’s best talent. If that continues, Kings Cross could evolve from a corporate hub into one of Britain’s most important strategic assets.