Looking for the best student discounts? I don’t blame you. Going to college is expensive. Between tuition, textbooks, and beer, there isn’t always a lot of wiggle room in the budget. Tack on the skyrocketing cost of living, and you might be wondering just how you’re supposed to manage your money. One way to stretch those dollars further is by taking advantage of student discounts. A valid .edu email address can help you save on plenty of necessities, with a little left over for binge-watching on Netflix or cheap food delivery. We’ve rounded up our favorite student discounts below.
Updated August 2025: We refreshed this guide with updated links and ensured accuracy throughout.
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How to Qualify for .Edu Discounts
In the good old days, it was easy to cheat your way into student discounts. You could photoshop a student ID or snag a fake email address for $5 after a Google search. But thanks to third-party verification services, it’s now almost impossible (and in some cases, illegal) to obtain and use a fake qualifying email. No, that hack you saw on TikTok probably isn’t legit.
We don’t advise attempting to get a student email address if you aren’t actually a student. But some educational discounts can also be used by teachers, parents of students, or alumni. Sometimes getting a student discount is as simple as confirming a code sent from the retailer to the email in question. Other times they rely on third-party services like Unidays to verify your student status after you upload a photo of your school ID. Your school may also have its own portal to verify your account.
Once verified, you can take advantage of student discounts either on the Unidays website or by logging in to your Unidays account when prompted at stores that use it as an authentication method. ID Me, Sheer ID, and Student Beans are other services that act as a verification method and shopping portal.
Tech Deals
Whether you need headphones, an office chair, or a USB hub, there are probably a few gadgets on your school shopping list. The stores below offer student discounts on all of the gadgets and gizmos you could need. Check out our buying guides, like the Best Dorm Gear, Best Laptops, and Best Buy-It-for-Life Gear, for WIRED-tested recommendations.
The Apple Education Store offers about 10 percent off to students, their parents, and teachers. Usually, deals are sweetened around autumn. Right now there are offers like free AirPods with the purchase of a MacBook, or a free Apple Pencil with the purchase of an iPad. You can save on services like AppleCare+ or Apple Music too.
The Dell University Store offers discounts up to 10 percent off to those with .edu email addresses. Simply sign up for a free Dell Rewards account, and then verify your student status. Savings are reflected in your shopping cart. Some Dell University discounts can be stacked with other deals at Dell to save even more. Most stores don’t let you stack deals, which makes these a bit more enticing. You can also get extra Dell Rewards, which might be useful if you’re purchasing a lot of Dell gear.
Sign up for the HP education program discounts by verifying your .edu email address. (Some discounts are available to everyone, regardless of student status, but other deals are exclusive to students, teachers, parents, and faculty.) HP says eligible shoppers can save up to 40 percent off on select products.
Lenovo switches up its discounts on a regular basis, but students and teachers can always get 5 percent off, with additional discounts and bonuses being offered on occasion. In the past, those bonuses have included free Uber vouchers for spending a certain amount. Lenovo Education accounts are free and verified via ID Me. Discounts are applied automatically during checkout.
Snag 25 percent off at Logitech by validating your email via Unidays.
Microsoft offers up to 10 percent off a variety of products, including Surface devices and accessories. Parents, students, and faculty are eligible.
Samsung’s program is for students and educators, who get up to 30 percent off laptops, tablets, phones, and other gadgets. You can also sometimes get additional perks, like more base storage or free accessories with purchase. You can also check out WIRED’s page of Samsung coupon codes.
Razer’s education deals vary, but there’s a selection of discounted gaming laptops and PC components. Eligible shoppers include students, parents buying on behalf of students, and faculty. You can also save 15 percent on peripherals and 5 percent on Razer gaming chairs.
Unlimited phone plans and Fios home internet are both discounted for college students. As is typical with cell phone service providers, terms and conditions apply, but this is worth looking into if you’re a Verizon customer (or considering making a switch). We have Verizon coupon codes that could save you $1,100.
College students can get 20 percent off an entire qualifying shopping trip at Target. There are some exclusions, and you’ll need to join the free Target Circle program to redeem the offer. You can also save 50 percent on the paid Circle 360 membership, which gets you free two-day shipping, early access to select sales, and more. These deals are generally valid from June through September. This year, they end on September 27.
Online Service Deals
The services you use every day might be even cheaper, thanks to that sweet, sweet institution inbox. Signing up for the first time? Our “What to Watch” and Best Music Streaming Services guides may be of some assistance. Your college or university may also offer their own private discounts. Insurance providers sometimes offer student benefits too.
Spotify Premium Student costs $6 per month, which is a 50 percent discount. It also includes a subscription to Hulu. Both of them come with commercials. If you love your TV, this is one of the best student discounts around, especially if you’re already paying $6 per month for Hulu. New signups can get a free six-month trial for a limited time.
Usually, Apple Music costs $11 per month. Students pay $6 after a one-month free trial. The Apple Music Student subscription also includes Apple TV+. Your eligibility will be verified via Unidays.
Students can get 50 percent off a Tidal premium music streaming membership by signing up for the Student plan. The offer is available to high schoolers ages 16 and up as well, not just folks enrolled in higher education.
Formerly known as Amazon Prime Student, Amazon has a special discount for its “Prime for Young Adults” membership, which is meant for adults ages 18 to 24. You’ll be charged $7.49 per month, rather than the typical $15 price. Prime Student includes a few special perks, like free Grubhub Student+ access and discounted meditation app memberships. You may also be eligible for a free six-month trial.
Students can get the ad-supported Hulu plan for $2 per month instead of the usual $8. This is the best option if you want access to Hulu but not Spotify. If you don’t immediately see the offer, click “Sign up now” and look for the mention of the student discount near the bottom of the sign-up page.
Typically, YouTube Premium costs $14 per month, but the cost drops to $8 for students after a free three-month trial. The membership includes access to both ad-free YouTube videos and ad-free YouTube Music.
Peacock Premium usually costs $6 per month, but students and young adults can get it for $3 per month for a year. WIRED has several Peacock coupon codes that might be useful to you, too.
Software and Class Deals
Whether you need to subscribe to an online service for class or just want a tool like Adobe Photoshop, these discounts can help you save.
Several of our Reviews team members have used and loved this service, which is enthusiastically recommended on nearly every finance forum on the internet. It can be pretty difficult to use, especially when you’re first starting—but if you don’t mind a steep learning curve, it’s worth a shot. (I found this video tutorial helpful.) Note that this deal is limited to college students.
Eligible students, parents, and educators get 50 percent off Ableton Live or can apply the same percentage off to Live bundled with Push. Ableton Live is our favorite DAW for DJs and live performers. This software is especially enticing for music creators, though if you’ve been considering uploading some fun projects to SoundCloud, it might be worth your while too. You don’t need to be a music major or a full-time student to take advantage of the offer.
Adobe Creative Cloud includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Firefly, Acrobat Pro, Lightroom, and more. You also get 100 gigabytes of cloud storage. It’s usually $70 a month. Students and educators can get it for $30 monthly. After a year, the $30 price is raised to $40, but it’s still a good discount if you can’t access needed Adobe apps another way. Note that this is billed annually.
This bundle includes licenses for Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Motion, and more. It’s tailored to video and music creators and costs $200. Considering that Final Cut Pro sells for $300 on its own, this bundle is a worthwhile purchase if you plan on buying any of these software licenses individually.
Courtesy of Dashlane
This is a great deal on one of the best password managers.
This freebie from GitHub contains free and discounted apps, services, software downloads, and more developer tools. From a free year-long domain on Namecheap to free courses on Educative and waived Stripe transaction fees, plus access to GitHub Pro, there are dozens of options to choose from. You don’t need to use them all, but you do need to be an enrolled student age 13 or older.
Verified through Student Beans, this deal gets you half off the normal cost of an annual individual website plan or a website platform plan. WIRED also has a Squarespace promo code that might be helpful to you.
I haven’t used Ulysses yet, but several industry colleagues swear by the Apple-device-exclusive writing software. It’s known for limiting distractions and helping with edits—two tools that should come in handy for students. It typically costs $40 per year. The subscription ends automatically, so you don’t need to remind yourself to cancel it, but you can renew it for as long as you remain a student.
Evernote is one of the long-standing note-taking apps. (It’s not our favorite, but if you’re a devotee, this is still a solid way to save some cash.) A valid .edu email address gets you 40 percent off a one-year Evernote Professional membership. Professional is the most robust Evernote plan, and it includes special perks like Boolean search, calendar connections, and more.
Notion is similar to Evernote and Google Keep. It’s handy for everything from making to-do lists to building outlines and other documents. The Plus Plan for education is free for students and educators. It’ll stay free as long as you have access to a university-associated email address. You may also be eligible for a discount on Notion AI services.
Students and educators can use a valid .edu email address to get free access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Teams, plus a few AI tools. There are free alternatives to Microsoft Office products, but if you insist on writing essays in Word, this is worth checking out.
Prezi offers a slate of tools used to perfect digital presentations. It can be integrated with Zoom or Google Meet. The service has two educational premium plans for students and educators that cost $4 or $8 per month (usually $7 or $19 per month, respectively).
This is $22 off the usual cost of a three-month Babbel subscription. Babbel is our favorite language-learning app.
Deals on Clothing, Magazines, Food, and More
If you need some retail therapy (or you just want to upgrade your dorm room on the cheap), plenty of non-tech stores offer student discounts. Some standouts are highlighted below.
Discounts on Magazine and Newspaper Subscriptions
We’re biased, but a year of unlimited digital access to WIRED costs $24 per year. Students can also get affordable subscriptions to The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, and more. If there’s a magazine or newspaper that you frequently read, you may be able to get a discount when you subscribe. You might also be able to get discounted or free subscriptions through the library.
Bring your student ID to the box office to get cheaper prices. Discounts vary by location, so check with your local theater for more details.
Unidays is the best way to find fashion retailers that have student discounts. A few athletic and outdoor stores are also listed, so even if you don’t need interview clothes for a fancy grown-up job, this could be a good way to save on sporting goods and other gear for your extracurricular activities.
Nike offers students 10 percent off most items. This offer is verified through Sheer ID and is valid for high school, college, and university students.
Amtrak offers a national discount to students between 17 and 24 years old.
This company makes some of our favorite paper planners. Your student status will be verified through ID Me at checkout.
DashPass usually costs $10 per month. Students can get it for half the normal cost, at $5 per month or $48 per year. DashPass gets you free delivery on most orders over $12, plus special discounts and promotions. You can also get credits back on DoorDash Pickup orders. If you’re looking for DoorDash coupons, we’ve got those here at WIRED, including a $25 off promo code.
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![This former notorious red-light district is now one of the world’s top AI hubs | TechCrunch
What every U.K. AI startup wants to know these days is, how can I get office space in King’s Cross?
The area is so hot that a VC firm allegedly recently won a deal by promising a founder office space in the neighborhood. “We stop at nothing to win deals [for] and to support” founders, “including helping them source office space when needed,” the firm told me when asked about the rumor, declining to confirm or deny any details.
The neighborhood’s popularity began back in 2016 when DeepMind — then newly acquired by Google — moved in. Soon after, a flood of AI startups followed, wanting to be around the Google DeepMind magic. Today, they hope to take advantage of the cluster of AI talent there.
This has transformed King’s Cross into one of the world’s top AI hubs, rivaled only by San Francisco and Beijing. Around London, it’s known by the sobriquet “Knowledge Quarter,” as it’s home to names like OpenAI, Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Cusp AI, Wayne, Recursive, and, a little farther down the road, Synthesia and Anthropic. The European Technology Network (ETN) just moved into a glossy new office nearby, while University College London sits around the corner.
Mixed in with the new developments are trendy food spots like Hoppers and BAO. Hop a train from King’s Cross, and founders can be in Cambridge in 45 minutes to source talent or can be in Paris in two hours to strike a deal.
Who would have guessed that a little more than 20 years ago, this was one of the seediest areas in London?
“In the ’80s, crack and heroin made the area a major narcotics market,” Hussein Kanji, an investor at Hoxton Ventures, said, recalling syringes in tree trunks and gangs patrolling the streets. “In 1982, the local church was occupied by the English Collective of Prostitutes for 12 straight days.” Then, in the early 2000s, a real estate developer had a dream and, well, “now it is the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom,” Kanji said. “What a change.” Around 18 months ago, his portfolio company BioCorteX moved from the neighborhood Holborn to the Jellicoe building in King’s Cross, hoping to be near the action. “Lots going on in London right now,” Nik Sharma, co-founder of BioCorteX, told me. “Lots of hyperscalers moving in.” That includes, reportedly, Jeff Bezos’ AI company Prometheus, which is also said to be in talks to move into the Jellicoe.
There are around 3,600 AI startups in London, which, together, have raised around .1 billion out of the .8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom. Since the start of June, AI-related startups have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. With that, prime rents in King’s Cross have risen 18% over the past three years, Chris Dunn, a commercial insight associate at the firm, told me. That percentage represents only the largest leases encompassing at least 10,000 square feet, like the ones OpenAI and Prometheus are signing. The shorter deals go for even more, he said, and now the vacancy rate for conventional office space is just 0.9%. “Demand has outstripped supply,” he continued.
Today, one of the big topics of the area is sovereignty. It was a wake-up call for many when Anthropic shut off access to Mythos and Fable this summer, leaving some in the ecosystem to conclude: “We’d better look after ourselves,” Saul Klein, co-founder of the VC firm Phoenix Court, told me.
Phoenix Court is located in the King’s Cross area and has three portfolio companies in the vicinity, including Olix (which just announced a .3 billion valuation), Early Health and CoMind. Robin Klein, co-founder of the firm, said the shutdown of Fable and Mythos access was a “small but sharp reminder that Europe can’t simply rent its AI capabilities and capacity; it needs to build and hold some of its own.” King’s Cross, he said, is where much of this building is actually happening.
“The bigger question,” he continued, “is whether the U.K. builds the infrastructure, compute, energy, capital, to make this self-reliance durable, rather than just hosting outposts of U.S. labs.”
Image Credits:Phoenix Court
Top founders want to stay
Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, has offices in King’s Cross and San Francisco. The London office, at the moment, is growing faster, and he’s more bullish than ever on the ecosystem, he said. “The mood right now feels less like London trying to catch up and more like London becoming one of the default places to start a serious AI company,” he said. Look around and you are likely to see Wayve testing its autonomous cars. Founded in 2017 by co-founder Alex Kendall, the unicorn is one of London’s biggest success stories.
“Ten years ago, building a frontier AI company from London felt like an unusual choice,” Kendall told me. “Now it feels like an obvious one.” Wayve moved into King’s Cross in 2018 looking for a space that could double as a garage — “a rare combination in Central London,” Kendall said. He has watched the ecosystem mature around him — and it’s now evident that a startup can stay in London, raise serious capital, hire world-class AI talent, and remain globally competitive, he said. Down the street from Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office is the AI agent builder Sierra and the AI video platform Synthesia.
Laura Gonzalez Florez, Synthesia’s chief of staff and head of people, says the company moved into its glossy new office building a year ago to accommodate its growing team. They were drawn to the area for the same reason as everyone else: “It’s very close to the airport … very close to where a lot of investors are,” she said.
Image Credits:Synthesia
Around two-thirds of Synthesia’s engineers are remote, Gonzalez Florez said, letting the company tap into an affordable, international, and diverse talent pool and helping it scale faster. “From London, we can hire and work, without any problem, people from anywhere, from Slovenia to Portugal,” she said.
Unsurprisingly, London’s AI boom is also causing a talent war.U.K. AI job postings have skyrocketed in the past few years, per data from PwC. When Anthropic announced it moved into town earlier this year, it listed, for example, a salary range of £260,000 to £630,000 for a machine learning research engineer when the average salary in London for the same role is around £102,000. Some founders in the U.K., like those in Silicon Valley, are being forced to raise more and bigger rounds to keep up.
“The real test is whether more globally significant AI companies are founded, funded, and scaled from the U.K., while continuing to attract the world’s best talent to build them here,” Zain Ali, founder of the King’s Cross-based AI legal firm Centuro, told me. “If that continues to happen, King’s Cross won’t just be an AI hub. It’ll become one of the U.K.’s most important strategic assets.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Thisformernotorious #redlight #districtis #nowone #worlds #top #hubs #TechCrunchUK](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/DM9A2852.jpg?w=680 "This former notorious red-light district is now one of the world’s top AI hubs | TechCrunch
What every U.K. AI startup wants to know these days is, how can I get office space in King’s Cross?
The area is so hot that a VC firm allegedly recently won a deal by promising a founder office space in the neighborhood. “We stop at nothing to win deals [for] and to support” founders, “including helping them source office space when needed,” the firm told me when asked about the rumor, declining to confirm or deny any details.
The neighborhood’s popularity began back in 2016 when DeepMind — then newly acquired by Google — moved in. Soon after, a flood of AI startups followed, wanting to be around the Google DeepMind magic. Today, they hope to take advantage of the cluster of AI talent there.
This has transformed King’s Cross into one of the world’s top AI hubs, rivaled only by San Francisco and Beijing. Around London, it’s known by the sobriquet “Knowledge Quarter,” as it’s home to names like OpenAI, Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Cusp AI, Wayne, Recursive, and, a little farther down the road, Synthesia and Anthropic. The European Technology Network (ETN) just moved into a glossy new office nearby, while University College London sits around the corner.
Mixed in with the new developments are trendy food spots like Hoppers and BAO. Hop a train from King’s Cross, and founders can be in Cambridge in 45 minutes to source talent or can be in Paris in two hours to strike a deal.
Who would have guessed that a little more than 20 years ago, this was one of the seediest areas in London?
“In the ’80s, crack and heroin made the area a major narcotics market,” Hussein Kanji, an investor at Hoxton Ventures, said, recalling syringes in tree trunks and gangs patrolling the streets. “In 1982, the local church was occupied by the English Collective of Prostitutes for 12 straight days.” Then, in the early 2000s, a real estate developer had a dream and, well, “now it is the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom,” Kanji said. “What a change.” Around 18 months ago, his portfolio company BioCorteX moved from the neighborhood Holborn to the Jellicoe building in King’s Cross, hoping to be near the action. “Lots going on in London right now,” Nik Sharma, co-founder of BioCorteX, told me. “Lots of hyperscalers moving in.” That includes, reportedly, Jeff Bezos’ AI company Prometheus, which is also said to be in talks to move into the Jellicoe.
There are around 3,600 AI startups in London, which, together, have raised around .1 billion out of the .8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom. Since the start of June, AI-related startups have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. With that, prime rents in King’s Cross have risen 18% over the past three years, Chris Dunn, a commercial insight associate at the firm, told me. That percentage represents only the largest leases encompassing at least 10,000 square feet, like the ones OpenAI and Prometheus are signing. The shorter deals go for even more, he said, and now the vacancy rate for conventional office space is just 0.9%. “Demand has outstripped supply,” he continued.
Today, one of the big topics of the area is sovereignty. It was a wake-up call for many when Anthropic shut off access to Mythos and Fable this summer, leaving some in the ecosystem to conclude: “We’d better look after ourselves,” Saul Klein, co-founder of the VC firm Phoenix Court, told me.
Phoenix Court is located in the King’s Cross area and has three portfolio companies in the vicinity, including Olix (which just announced a .3 billion valuation), Early Health and CoMind. Robin Klein, co-founder of the firm, said the shutdown of Fable and Mythos access was a “small but sharp reminder that Europe can’t simply rent its AI capabilities and capacity; it needs to build and hold some of its own.” King’s Cross, he said, is where much of this building is actually happening.
“The bigger question,” he continued, “is whether the U.K. builds the infrastructure, compute, energy, capital, to make this self-reliance durable, rather than just hosting outposts of U.S. labs.”
Image Credits:Phoenix Court
Top founders want to stay
Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, has offices in King’s Cross and San Francisco. The London office, at the moment, is growing faster, and he’s more bullish than ever on the ecosystem, he said. “The mood right now feels less like London trying to catch up and more like London becoming one of the default places to start a serious AI company,” he said. Look around and you are likely to see Wayve testing its autonomous cars. Founded in 2017 by co-founder Alex Kendall, the unicorn is one of London’s biggest success stories.
“Ten years ago, building a frontier AI company from London felt like an unusual choice,” Kendall told me. “Now it feels like an obvious one.” Wayve moved into King’s Cross in 2018 looking for a space that could double as a garage — “a rare combination in Central London,” Kendall said. He has watched the ecosystem mature around him — and it’s now evident that a startup can stay in London, raise serious capital, hire world-class AI talent, and remain globally competitive, he said. Down the street from Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office is the AI agent builder Sierra and the AI video platform Synthesia.
Laura Gonzalez Florez, Synthesia’s chief of staff and head of people, says the company moved into its glossy new office building a year ago to accommodate its growing team. They were drawn to the area for the same reason as everyone else: “It’s very close to the airport … very close to where a lot of investors are,” she said.
Image Credits:Synthesia
Around two-thirds of Synthesia’s engineers are remote, Gonzalez Florez said, letting the company tap into an affordable, international, and diverse talent pool and helping it scale faster. “From London, we can hire and work, without any problem, people from anywhere, from Slovenia to Portugal,” she said.
Unsurprisingly, London’s AI boom is also causing a talent war.U.K. AI job postings have skyrocketed in the past few years, per data from PwC. When Anthropic announced it moved into town earlier this year, it listed, for example, a salary range of £260,000 to £630,000 for a machine learning research engineer when the average salary in London for the same role is around £102,000. Some founders in the U.K., like those in Silicon Valley, are being forced to raise more and bigger rounds to keep up.
“The real test is whether more globally significant AI companies are founded, funded, and scaled from the U.K., while continuing to attract the world’s best talent to build them here,” Zain Ali, founder of the King’s Cross-based AI legal firm Centuro, told me. “If that continues to happen, King’s Cross won’t just be an AI hub. It’ll become one of the U.K.’s most important strategic assets.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Thisformernotorious #redlight #districtis #nowone #worlds #top #hubs #TechCrunchUK")
![This former notorious red-light district is now one of the world’s top AI hubs | TechCrunch
What every U.K. AI startup wants to know these days is, how can I get office space in King’s Cross?
The area is so hot that a VC firm allegedly recently won a deal by promising a founder office space in the neighborhood. “We stop at nothing to win deals [for] and to support” founders, “including helping them source office space when needed,” the firm told me when asked about the rumor, declining to confirm or deny any details.
The neighborhood’s popularity began back in 2016 when DeepMind — then newly acquired by Google — moved in. Soon after, a flood of AI startups followed, wanting to be around the Google DeepMind magic. Today, they hope to take advantage of the cluster of AI talent there.
This has transformed King’s Cross into one of the world’s top AI hubs, rivaled only by San Francisco and Beijing. Around London, it’s known by the sobriquet “Knowledge Quarter,” as it’s home to names like OpenAI, Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Cusp AI, Wayne, Recursive, and, a little farther down the road, Synthesia and Anthropic. The European Technology Network (ETN) just moved into a glossy new office nearby, while University College London sits around the corner.
Mixed in with the new developments are trendy food spots like Hoppers and BAO. Hop a train from King’s Cross, and founders can be in Cambridge in 45 minutes to source talent or can be in Paris in two hours to strike a deal.
Who would have guessed that a little more than 20 years ago, this was one of the seediest areas in London?
“In the ’80s, crack and heroin made the area a major narcotics market,” Hussein Kanji, an investor at Hoxton Ventures, said, recalling syringes in tree trunks and gangs patrolling the streets. “In 1982, the local church was occupied by the English Collective of Prostitutes for 12 straight days.” Then, in the early 2000s, a real estate developer had a dream and, well, “now it is the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom,” Kanji said. “What a change.” Around 18 months ago, his portfolio company BioCorteX moved from the neighborhood Holborn to the Jellicoe building in King’s Cross, hoping to be near the action. “Lots going on in London right now,” Nik Sharma, co-founder of BioCorteX, told me. “Lots of hyperscalers moving in.” That includes, reportedly, Jeff Bezos’ AI company Prometheus, which is also said to be in talks to move into the Jellicoe.
There are around 3,600 AI startups in London, which, together, have raised around .1 billion out of the .8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom. Since the start of June, AI-related startups have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. With that, prime rents in King’s Cross have risen 18% over the past three years, Chris Dunn, a commercial insight associate at the firm, told me. That percentage represents only the largest leases encompassing at least 10,000 square feet, like the ones OpenAI and Prometheus are signing. The shorter deals go for even more, he said, and now the vacancy rate for conventional office space is just 0.9%. “Demand has outstripped supply,” he continued.
Today, one of the big topics of the area is sovereignty. It was a wake-up call for many when Anthropic shut off access to Mythos and Fable this summer, leaving some in the ecosystem to conclude: “We’d better look after ourselves,” Saul Klein, co-founder of the VC firm Phoenix Court, told me.
Phoenix Court is located in the King’s Cross area and has three portfolio companies in the vicinity, including Olix (which just announced a .3 billion valuation), Early Health and CoMind. Robin Klein, co-founder of the firm, said the shutdown of Fable and Mythos access was a “small but sharp reminder that Europe can’t simply rent its AI capabilities and capacity; it needs to build and hold some of its own.” King’s Cross, he said, is where much of this building is actually happening.
“The bigger question,” he continued, “is whether the U.K. builds the infrastructure, compute, energy, capital, to make this self-reliance durable, rather than just hosting outposts of U.S. labs.”
Image Credits:Phoenix Court
Top founders want to stay
Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, has offices in King’s Cross and San Francisco. The London office, at the moment, is growing faster, and he’s more bullish than ever on the ecosystem, he said. “The mood right now feels less like London trying to catch up and more like London becoming one of the default places to start a serious AI company,” he said. Look around and you are likely to see Wayve testing its autonomous cars. Founded in 2017 by co-founder Alex Kendall, the unicorn is one of London’s biggest success stories.
“Ten years ago, building a frontier AI company from London felt like an unusual choice,” Kendall told me. “Now it feels like an obvious one.” Wayve moved into King’s Cross in 2018 looking for a space that could double as a garage — “a rare combination in Central London,” Kendall said. He has watched the ecosystem mature around him — and it’s now evident that a startup can stay in London, raise serious capital, hire world-class AI talent, and remain globally competitive, he said. Down the street from Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office is the AI agent builder Sierra and the AI video platform Synthesia.
Laura Gonzalez Florez, Synthesia’s chief of staff and head of people, says the company moved into its glossy new office building a year ago to accommodate its growing team. They were drawn to the area for the same reason as everyone else: “It’s very close to the airport … very close to where a lot of investors are,” she said.
Image Credits:Synthesia
Around two-thirds of Synthesia’s engineers are remote, Gonzalez Florez said, letting the company tap into an affordable, international, and diverse talent pool and helping it scale faster. “From London, we can hire and work, without any problem, people from anywhere, from Slovenia to Portugal,” she said.
Unsurprisingly, London’s AI boom is also causing a talent war.U.K. AI job postings have skyrocketed in the past few years, per data from PwC. When Anthropic announced it moved into town earlier this year, it listed, for example, a salary range of £260,000 to £630,000 for a machine learning research engineer when the average salary in London for the same role is around £102,000. Some founders in the U.K., like those in Silicon Valley, are being forced to raise more and bigger rounds to keep up.
“The real test is whether more globally significant AI companies are founded, funded, and scaled from the U.K., while continuing to attract the world’s best talent to build them here,” Zain Ali, founder of the King’s Cross-based AI legal firm Centuro, told me. “If that continues to happen, King’s Cross won’t just be an AI hub. It’ll become one of the U.K.’s most important strategic assets.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Thisformernotorious #redlight #districtis #nowone #worlds #top #hubs #TechCrunchUK](https://i0.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/DM9A2852.jpg?w=680&ssl=1 "This former notorious red-light district is now one of the world’s top AI hubs | TechCrunch
What every U.K. AI startup wants to know these days is, how can I get office space in King’s Cross?
The area is so hot that a VC firm allegedly recently won a deal by promising a founder office space in the neighborhood. “We stop at nothing to win deals [for] and to support” founders, “including helping them source office space when needed,” the firm told me when asked about the rumor, declining to confirm or deny any details.
The neighborhood’s popularity began back in 2016 when DeepMind — then newly acquired by Google — moved in. Soon after, a flood of AI startups followed, wanting to be around the Google DeepMind magic. Today, they hope to take advantage of the cluster of AI talent there.
This has transformed King’s Cross into one of the world’s top AI hubs, rivaled only by San Francisco and Beijing. Around London, it’s known by the sobriquet “Knowledge Quarter,” as it’s home to names like OpenAI, Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Cusp AI, Wayne, Recursive, and, a little farther down the road, Synthesia and Anthropic. The European Technology Network (ETN) just moved into a glossy new office nearby, while University College London sits around the corner.
Mixed in with the new developments are trendy food spots like Hoppers and BAO. Hop a train from King’s Cross, and founders can be in Cambridge in 45 minutes to source talent or can be in Paris in two hours to strike a deal.
Who would have guessed that a little more than 20 years ago, this was one of the seediest areas in London?
“In the ’80s, crack and heroin made the area a major narcotics market,” Hussein Kanji, an investor at Hoxton Ventures, said, recalling syringes in tree trunks and gangs patrolling the streets. “In 1982, the local church was occupied by the English Collective of Prostitutes for 12 straight days.” Then, in the early 2000s, a real estate developer had a dream and, well, “now it is the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom,” Kanji said. “What a change.” Around 18 months ago, his portfolio company BioCorteX moved from the neighborhood Holborn to the Jellicoe building in King’s Cross, hoping to be near the action. “Lots going on in London right now,” Nik Sharma, co-founder of BioCorteX, told me. “Lots of hyperscalers moving in.” That includes, reportedly, Jeff Bezos’ AI company Prometheus, which is also said to be in talks to move into the Jellicoe.
There are around 3,600 AI startups in London, which, together, have raised around .1 billion out of the .8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom. Since the start of June, AI-related startups have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. With that, prime rents in King’s Cross have risen 18% over the past three years, Chris Dunn, a commercial insight associate at the firm, told me. That percentage represents only the largest leases encompassing at least 10,000 square feet, like the ones OpenAI and Prometheus are signing. The shorter deals go for even more, he said, and now the vacancy rate for conventional office space is just 0.9%. “Demand has outstripped supply,” he continued.
Today, one of the big topics of the area is sovereignty. It was a wake-up call for many when Anthropic shut off access to Mythos and Fable this summer, leaving some in the ecosystem to conclude: “We’d better look after ourselves,” Saul Klein, co-founder of the VC firm Phoenix Court, told me.
Phoenix Court is located in the King’s Cross area and has three portfolio companies in the vicinity, including Olix (which just announced a .3 billion valuation), Early Health and CoMind. Robin Klein, co-founder of the firm, said the shutdown of Fable and Mythos access was a “small but sharp reminder that Europe can’t simply rent its AI capabilities and capacity; it needs to build and hold some of its own.” King’s Cross, he said, is where much of this building is actually happening.
“The bigger question,” he continued, “is whether the U.K. builds the infrastructure, compute, energy, capital, to make this self-reliance durable, rather than just hosting outposts of U.S. labs.”
Image Credits:Phoenix Court
Top founders want to stay
Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, has offices in King’s Cross and San Francisco. The London office, at the moment, is growing faster, and he’s more bullish than ever on the ecosystem, he said. “The mood right now feels less like London trying to catch up and more like London becoming one of the default places to start a serious AI company,” he said. Look around and you are likely to see Wayve testing its autonomous cars. Founded in 2017 by co-founder Alex Kendall, the unicorn is one of London’s biggest success stories.
“Ten years ago, building a frontier AI company from London felt like an unusual choice,” Kendall told me. “Now it feels like an obvious one.” Wayve moved into King’s Cross in 2018 looking for a space that could double as a garage — “a rare combination in Central London,” Kendall said. He has watched the ecosystem mature around him — and it’s now evident that a startup can stay in London, raise serious capital, hire world-class AI talent, and remain globally competitive, he said. Down the street from Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office is the AI agent builder Sierra and the AI video platform Synthesia.
Laura Gonzalez Florez, Synthesia’s chief of staff and head of people, says the company moved into its glossy new office building a year ago to accommodate its growing team. They were drawn to the area for the same reason as everyone else: “It’s very close to the airport … very close to where a lot of investors are,” she said.
Image Credits:Synthesia
Around two-thirds of Synthesia’s engineers are remote, Gonzalez Florez said, letting the company tap into an affordable, international, and diverse talent pool and helping it scale faster. “From London, we can hire and work, without any problem, people from anywhere, from Slovenia to Portugal,” she said.
Unsurprisingly, London’s AI boom is also causing a talent war.U.K. AI job postings have skyrocketed in the past few years, per data from PwC. When Anthropic announced it moved into town earlier this year, it listed, for example, a salary range of £260,000 to £630,000 for a machine learning research engineer when the average salary in London for the same role is around £102,000. Some founders in the U.K., like those in Silicon Valley, are being forced to raise more and bigger rounds to keep up.
“The real test is whether more globally significant AI companies are founded, funded, and scaled from the U.K., while continuing to attract the world’s best talent to build them here,” Zain Ali, founder of the King’s Cross-based AI legal firm Centuro, told me. “If that continues to happen, King’s Cross won’t just be an AI hub. It’ll become one of the U.K.’s most important strategic assets.”
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