Anthropic said on Thursday that it is expanding its footprint in London, securing new office space that will accommodate up to 800 employees.

The move comes just days after rival OpenAI announced plans to establish its first permanent office in the UK capital.

The company, which develops the Claude AI chatbot, said it currently has more than 200 staff based in London.

“London is already one of our most important research and commercial hubs outside the US, and our expansion in the Knowledge Quarter gives us the room to grow into,” Pip White, Anthropic’s head of EMEA north, said in a statement.

“The UK combines ambitious enterprises and institutions that understand what’s at stake with AI safety with an exceptional pool of AI talent — we want to be where all of that comes together.”

Anthropic’s new office will be situated in London’s Knowledge Quarter, a technology hub that hosts several major AI players, including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta, Synthesia and Wayve.

The expansion comes amid reports that UK officials actively sought to attract Anthropic, following the company’s dispute with the US Pentagon over the deployment of its AI models.

Anthropic has gathered fresh momentum in recent months with the launch of its viral coding agent, Claude Code, as well as its Mythos AI model, designed to detect software vulnerabilities and security flaws.

In February, the company raised $30 billion at a reported $380 billion valuation and has since received venture capital interest at valuations as high as $800 billion, according to media reports.