OpenAI Dublin headquarters lease covers 88,000 square feet

OpenAI has taken an 88,000-square-foot lease for a new European Union base, making the OpenAI Dublin headquarters one of the larger recent office commitments by an AI company in the city. The company said it plans to hire 250 people in Ireland over the next two years, adding to a local workforce of more than 100.

The office will be at the Tropical Fruit Warehouse in Dublin’s docklands, a building developed by Iput Real Estate. OpenAI expects to move into the site in late 2026. Financial terms of the lease were not disclosed.

The announcement was made at an event attended by Taoiseach Micheál Martin. Emma Redmond, associate general counsel and head of OpenAI Ireland, said the new EU headquarters reflects the company’s longer-term investment in Ireland and its effort to meet regional demand.

What jobs is OpenAI adding in Dublin?

OpenAI said the 250 planned roles will span go-to-market, engineering, user operations, human resources, finance, privacy, legal, and corporate or secretarial functions. The mix shows the Dublin operation is intended to be more than a sales outpost, with compliance, privacy and corporate functions sitting alongside commercial and technical hiring.

The Irish Times reported earlier that the Tropical Fruit Warehouse had previously been planned for TikTok’s Dublin expansion before TikTok consolidated its Irish operations at another location. Bloomberg had also reported that OpenAI and Anthropic were looking for more office space in Dublin.

The move gives OpenAI a larger base in a city already used by major US technology companies as a European headquarters location. Google, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok have established significant operations there, helped by Ireland’s English-speaking labor pool, tax regime and access to the EU market.

How does Anthropic compare in Dublin?

OpenAI’s lease follows Anthropic’s Dublin expansion in March, when the company confirmed it would increase its office footprint to 21,000 square feet and add 200 roles. Anthropic said those roles would cover engineering, sales, finance, legal and operations, and tied the expansion to year-on-year revenue growth across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Tech Funding News previously tracked OpenAI and Anthropic’s Dublin office searches, reporting in December 2025 that both companies were each seeking about 25,000 square feet. OpenAI’s 88,000-square-foot lease is well above that earlier figure, while Anthropic has also been adding European offices, including a Milan site and a 158,000-square-foot London lease in the Knowledge Quarter.

Together, OpenAI and Anthropic have now committed to 450 additional Dublin roles within four months, on top of roughly 160 employees they already had in the city.

Why does Dublin matter for AI regulation?

Dublin’s importance is not only real estate. OpenAI Ireland Limited has been the data controller for European Economic Area and Swiss users since 2024, using GDPR’s one-stop-shop structure to make Ireland’s Data Protection Commission its lead supervisory authority. Meta and TikTok use a similar Irish regulatory setup.

The EU AI Act is less settled. Enforcement responsibilities are being split between national market surveillance authorities and the EU AI Office in Brussels, which directly oversees general-purpose AI models such as GPT and Claude. That means Ireland’s Data Protection Commission does not automatically become the main AI Act regulator for OpenAI or Anthropic.

Even so, both companies are expanding legal and privacy teams in Dublin while AI Act enforcement structures are still being set. For enterprise buyers and policymakers, the hiring matters because it indicates where these companies expect to handle a growing share of their European compliance and operating work.

This story draws on original reporting from TechFundingNews.