Bezos’s Project Prometheus eyes London office at King’s Cross

TL;DR:

  • Jeff Bezos’s AI lab Project Prometheus is reportedly in talks for around 38,000 sq ft over three floors at the Jellicoe Building in King’s Cross.
  • The lab recently closed a £7.6 billion ($10 billion) round at a £29 billion ($38 billion) valuation and is focused on AI for engineering and manufacturing.
  • For the UK, this is another data point that London is consolidating as a frontier-lab destination — alongside Anthropic, OpenAI and Scale AI footprints — even as ministers fight off EU regulatory alignment to keep the pitch intact.

Jeff Bezos’s artificial intelligence venture Project Prometheus is in talks to take office space at London’s King’s Cross, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the Financial Times. The lab is discussing a lease at the Jellicoe Building covering three floors and roughly 38,000 sq ft.

Project Prometheus is focused on AI that can interpret and operate on the physical world, with applications in engineering and manufacturing. The lab recently closed a £7.6 billion ($10 billion) fundraising round at a £29 billion ($38 billion) post-money valuation. Neither Prometheus nor the King’s Cross Group, the building’s owner, commented on the negotiations.

A wider London land grab

The Bezos lab would join a steadily building cluster. Anthropic recently signed for 158,000 sq ft at One Triton Square, owned by British Land. OpenAI took 88,500 sq ft at Regent Quarter in King’s Cross — space that can house up to 544 people — alongside its existing 200-strong London team. Scale AI quadrupled its UK footprint to 11,000 sq ft at 2 Pancras Square earlier this year.

Real-estate adviser CBRE forecasts that AI-led companies will absorb up to 4 million sq ft of London office space by 2033, against the 1.5 million sq ft they occupy today. That projected demand would equate to 43% of central London’s currently unleased space under development. AI-related tenants now account for nearly 12% of landlord GPE’s office portfolio and over a quarter of its fully managed flexible space, with GPE chief executive Toby Courtauld arguing that demand is unlikely to slow even if the wider AI bubble narrative deflates.

Why the UK angle matters this week

The Prometheus story lands against a politically loaded backdrop. UK ministers reportedly resisting alignment with EU AI rules cite the lighter-touch regulatory pitch as the very thing drawing this kind of frontier-lab investment. Each new lease confirms that argument is at least partly working — and raises the cost of any policy move that would erode it.

For UK businesses, the practical signal is narrower: high-tier London office demand is now a function of frontier-lab strategy more than financial-services hiring. The supply of premium central space is moving accordingly, and the post-bubble absorption assumptions baked into corporate property planning may need revisiting.

Share this article