A couple months after opening its first non-U.S. office in London, OpenAI has another one on the way, this time in Dublin.
Chief strategy officer Jason Kwon told Reuters that this wouldn’t be OpenAI’s European headquarters, which begs the question of where those will be. The location of a company’s EU HQ determine which data protection authority has jurisdiction over them, and Ireland’s is generally quite friendly to Big Tech.
What’s more, not having a European HQ causes all sorts of problems for a company such as OpenAI, which deals with an awful lot of personal data. It means OpenAI can be sued over privacy issues anywhere in the EU—the most recent complaint was lodged in Poland, and the ChatGPT maker has already had scrapes with data protection authorities in Italy and Spain. Better to officially set up shop in one place and deal with everything there.
OpenAI’s Dublin office may only have nine vacancies for now, but it’s clear what the firm has in mind for the satellite—the roles include an associate general counsel for EMEA, an Irish policy and partnerships lead, a privacy program manager, a privacy software engineer, and a European media relations lead.
Remember when CEO Sam Altman thought he could threaten to pull out of the EU over its looming AI Act—then, after European lawmakers accused it of blackmail, meekly added the next day that OpenAI is “excited to continue to operate here and of course [has] no plans to leave”? That may seem like a year or two ago (and in AI-evolution-time it probably was) but it was actually a little more than three months ago.
I’d be surprised if a quiet conversation with OpenAI sponsors Microsoft didn’t take place there, but either way, Altman and OpenAI have clearly learned at speed that, when it comes to Europe, engagement is the answer, not threats. And the company’s Dublin announcement comes with evidence of that, in the form of glowing testimonials from Irish politicians.
Here’s Enterprise and Employment Minister Simon Coveney: “In order for Ireland to benefit from AI, it is essential to ensure that we have a strong, supportive ecosystem in place and we believe that 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.”
Not a bad idea to have friends in the room while the AI Act is being finalized (in secret, sadly) by EU rulemakers including the governments of countries such as Ireland. More news below.
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David Meyer
