Artificial intelligence (AI) companies have signed for a record amount of office space in London amid a bumper wave of demand for work space from tech innovators looking to scale up.
In a sign that the pandemic’s work-from-home experiment has not stopped the need for new headquarters, lettings in the capital to AI businesses totalled 565,000 sq ft in the first four months of 2026, new data shows.
In addition a further 288,000 sq ft of deals are under-offer, according to preliminary figures compiled for the Daily Mail by property consultancy JLL.
That combined space is equivalent to the total square footage of the Walkie Talkie skyscraper in the Square Mile.
The estimated figures mean it will be a record first half for AI office take-up in London, comfortably ahead of the 211,000 sq ft and 130,000 sq ft signed for in the whole of 2025 and 2024 respectively.
Claude AI chatbot maker Anthropic is among the firms that have inked deals this year
Alex Browning, head of West End agency at JLL, said: ‘The rise has been meteoric and shows huge confidence in Central London as the best city to attract the top talent to scale their business.’
ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI chatbot, are among firms that have inked deals this year.
Firms are attracted to the capital’s ‘Knowledge Quarter’ around King’s Cross, encouraged by it being home to tech giants, start-ups and universities.
Expansion comes as the industry grows rapidly, with the global value of the AI sector forecast to climb to $710.8billion in 2027 from $617.6billion this year, according to estimates from market research firm Statista.
Meanwhile huge capital raises have been successful in the UK, with start-up Ineffable Intelligence in April securing $1.1billion to help create a ‘superlearner’.
Businesses that moved into larger new London offices over the past 12 months told the Daily Mail that having a presence in London is highly important.
Laura Gonzalez Florez, chief of staff at Synthesia said: ‘London is one of the world’s leading hubs for AI talent. Having a strong physical presence here is central to how we attract and retain the best people.’
She added that the company does not have an office mandate, but ‘what matters to us is that people are in the office when it creates real value: for collaboration, for onboarding, for quarterly alignment weeks’.
Trevor Thompson, global managing director at Scale AI said a move to a larger HQ in King’s Cross ‘helps us attract exceptional people, stay close to our customers and partners, and deepen our role in the UK’s fast-growing AI ecosystem’.
Property developers that committed to London office building during the pandemic and bet on demand for high quality space continuing even as hybrid working looked set to remain popular, are benefiting at a time when supply is constrained.
Mike Wiseman, head of campuses at FTSE 100 landlord British Land, said: ‘I think the level of [tech] demand that’s come through in the last six months is increasingly feeling like it is the strongest that we’ve seen ever.’
JLL is currently tracking 30 AI companies actively searching for office space in the capital.
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