FILE PHOTO: WorldCoin's iris-scanning device is seen at a sign-up site in Shoreditch, East London, Britain July 24, 2023. REUTERS/Elizabeth Howcroft/File Photo
(Reuters) -Artificial intelligence leader OpenAI is opening an office in Dublin, the Microsoft-backed company said Thursday.
It is the company's third office. Its headquarters are in San Francisco and it announced it was opening a London office in June.
The Dublin office is starting small, with nine open jobs across different teams, though OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon said the company intends to open more roles in the near future.
The Dublin office will not be the company's European headquarters and there will not be an executive running the office, at least not yet, Kwon said.
"We like to grow deliberately and not too rapidly because we want to make sure that the culture of the company is established first in new offices before we scale up," Kwon told Reuters.
OpenAI is one of many U.S. tech companies to set up shop in Dublin. In addition to access to a talent pool already familiar with the culture of companies like Meta and Google, Ireland is a good place to engage with Europe from a regulatory and business development standpoint, Kwon said.
Tax implications did not play a role in the decision, as OpenAI is not profitable, Kwon said.
OpenAI's ChatGPT is the second fastest-growing app in history, after Meta's Threads app. It has created both excitement and alarm, bringing OpenAI into conflict with regulators, particularly in Europe, where the company's mass data-collecting has drawn criticism from privacy watchdogs.
(Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Gerry Doyle)
