OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed operator of ChatGPT, has announced plans to open a new office in Dublin.

Announced on Thursday, the news after the company announced plans to open a London office in June in addition to OpenAI’s global headquarters in San Francisco.

The office represents OpenAI’s first location in the European Union, but the company has said that it will not serve as its European headquarters and that there will not be an executive running the office when it opens.

Saying that the office would bolster OpenAI’s “operations, trust and safety, go-to-market, security engineering, and legal work,” the company said that it will start small with nine open jobs across different teams.

In comments to Reuters, OpenAI chief strategy officer Daniel Kwon said that the company aims “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 the newswire that Ireland’s low corporate tax rate of 12.5 per cent did not play a role in the decision to open an office there.

Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI, praised Ireland’s approach to enabling tech innovation in a separate statement, commenting that the country “blends a talented workforce with support for innovation and responsible business growth.”

The company has also announced a partnership with Irish youth accelerator Patch to provide technology and mentorship to "exceptional 16-21 year olds".

Simon Coveney, minister for Enterprise, Trade, and Employment, said: “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.”

Despite its rapid growth in the past year – with ChatGPT being the second-fastest growing app of all time behind Meta’s recently launched Twitter alternative Threads – OpenAI has faced major scrutiny from European regulators over its data collection practices. The app was banned in Italy for almost a month earlier this year, while other legislators are considering their own approach to handling ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs).

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