OpenAI adds 200 Dublin jobs and builds its second applied AI lab

OpenAI is adding 200 roles in Dublin and building an applied AI lab at its EU headquarters, taking planned Irish hiring to 450. The move lands two days before Ireland hosts the International AI Summit under its EU presidency.

OpenAI is adding 200 jobs in Dublin and building an applied AI lab at its European headquarters. That takes its planned Irish hiring to 450 roles.

The company announced the roles in a statement on Monday, Bloomberg reported , and employs more than 120 people in Ireland. They include forward deployed, solutions and privacy engineers, plus sales and user operations.

It follows the 250 roles announced in July, when OpenAI took an 88,000 square foot lease at the Tropical Fruit Warehouse in the Docklands. The company moves in from December.

The lab is the second of its kind. It is a deployment unit rather than a research one, pairing engineers with customers building on OpenAI’s existing models.

The first opened in Singapore in May , with a S$300M commitment, about $235M, and roughly 200 staff planned. OpenAI has published no equivalent figure for Dublin.

Chief financial officer Sarah Friar said Ireland had been critical to the company’s success in Europe since the headquarters opened three years ago. OpenAI is also extending its OpenAI for Ireland programme for startups and smaller firms.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin called the investment a vote of confidence in the Irish economy, and IDA Ireland, which supported it, sent chief executive Michael Lohan. The timing is not accidental.

Dublin hosts the International AI Summit on Wednesday. Ireland holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU until the end of December, and Martin tied the announcement to both.

That presidency is contested. Ireland draws a large share of its corporate tax from the companies whose digital files it is now steering, and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties has asked it to recuse itself .

The Dublin entity also decides who can police OpenAI in Europe. The Data Protection Commission recognised OpenAI Ireland as the company’s single establishment in the bloc in February 2024.

That recognition has already killed a fine. A Rome court annulled Italy’s €15M penalty against OpenAI in March, finding the Garante had lost competence once the Irish regulator took over.

Main establishment status is not automatic. It requires the Irish office to take real decisions about how personal data is processed, and OpenAI is now hiring privacy engineers into it.

The hiring also lands in a city shedding tech jobs. TikTok proposed cutting about 300 Dublin roles in July, and Meta cut 8,000 globally in May.