UPDATE: Jul. 11, 2025, 8:00 a.m. EDT We’ve updated this story to reflect current pricing and availability. We’ve also selected a new favorite 2-in-1 laptop deal, as our previous pick sold out.
The battle of the best Prime Day laptop deals seemed like M4 MacBook Air’s game to lose. In the lead-up to its annual members-only sale this week, Amazon had Apple’s latest 13-incher marked down to only $849 (in all colorways, too). That’s $150 off the M4 MacBook Air’s already modest MSRP of $999, which is a hefty discount for a popular laptop that only just came out in March.
I thought it would be tough for Amazon to one-up that deal once Prime Day formally started, but I’m happy to say it’s proven me wrong: A slew of Windows laptops have fallen to record-low prices there since Tuesday. That includes our beloved Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 and five different gaming laptops with Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series graphic cards, which were my Prime Day white whales. I really didn’t expect Amazon to put any on sale, much less at such steep discounts.
SEE ALSO:
Prime Day 2025: Live updates on the top deals
As Mashable’s resident laptop guru (and someone who’s been covering Prime Day since 2019), I want to share a few quick reminders to help you make smart shopping decisions when you’re making a purchase as big as a new computer. One is to avoid third-party sellers on Amazon, which may have their own customer service policies or dabble in sketchy selling practices. The other is to cross-check prices with other retailers to verify Amazon’s deals — it occasionally lists incorrect MSRPs — and to make sure you’re getting the best price possible. For what it’s worth, Best Buy is Amazon’s biggest rival when it comes to laptop deals. It’s currently running a Black Friday in July sale alongside Prime Day through July 13, and its own RTX 50 series deals are pretty great.
Below, I’ve rounded up the best Prime Day laptop deals I’ve found on Amazon. Keep in mind that today (Friday, July 11) is the final day of the sale, and I don’t expect these offers to hang around much longer. Note: Deals marked with a 🔥 have dropped to an all-time low price, while struck-through deals were sold out or expired at the time of writing.
Best MacBook deal
Why we like it
Read Mashable’s full review of the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air (M4).
The new 13-inch MacBook Air is our top budget pick for Apple users and a Mashable Choice Award winner. “It’s powerful, silent, and comes with a couple of much-needed upgrades,” including an upgraded 12MP webcam and support for two external displays, wrote senior editor Stan Schroeder. He gave it an overall rating of 4.5/5.
Amazon’s $849 deal applies to all colors of the base configuration with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage. The Sky Blue variant briefly dipped down to an even-cheaper $829 in late June, but I have no trouble endorsing it at its current price: It’s such a good deal on a popular new laptop that’s already pretty affordable.
Mashable Deals
More MacBook Air deals
-
Apple MacBook Air, 13-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $1,049
$1,199(save $150) -
Apple MacBook Air, 15-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $1,049
$1,199(save $150) -
Apple MacBook Air, 13-inch (M4, 24GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $1,245.50
$1,399(save $1,523.50) -
Apple MacBook Air, 15-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $1,249
$1,399(save $150) -
Apple MacBook Air, 15-inch (M4, 24GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $1,432.50
$1,599(save $166.50)
MacBook Pro deals
-
Apple MacBook Pro, 14-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $1,429
$1,599(save $170) -
Apple MacBook Pro, 14-inch (M4, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,599
$1,799(save $200) -
Apple MacBook Pro, 14-inch (M4, 24GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,749
$1,999(save $250) -
Apple MacBook Pro, 14-inch (M4 Pro, 24GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $1,779
$1,999(save $220) -
Apple MacBook Pro, 16-inch (M4 Pro, 24GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $2,234
$2,499(save $265) -
Apple MacBook Pro, 16-inch (M4 Pro, 48GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $2,587.50
$2,899(save $311.50) -
Apple MacBook Pro, 14-inch (M4 Max, 36GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $2,874.50
$3,199(save $324.50) -
Apple MacBook Pro, 16-inch (M4 Max, 36GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $3,117.50
$3,499(save $381.50) -
Apple MacBook Pro, 16-inch (M4 Max, 48GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $3,557.50
$3,999(save $441.50)
Best Windows laptop deal
Why we like it
Read Mashable’s full review of the 13.8-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop 7.
Microsoft’s 13.8-inch flagship PC is our favorite Windows laptop, combining a slick, sophisticated design with peppy performance and an all-day battery life. (Literally: It lasted nearly 23 hours in our testing.) This variant has a high-end Snapdragon X Elite processor, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage — our ideal baseline specs for most everyday users.
Prime members can snag the Platinum colorway on sale for just $918.99, which is 34% off its $1,399.99 MSRP and a new all-time low by a couple bucks. For comparison’s sake, Amazon’s deal is $181 cheaper than a competing discount in the Microsoft Store.
More Windows laptop deals
-
Asus Vivobook Go (AMD Ryzen 3 7320U, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) — $219.99
$329.99(save $110 with Prime) -
Acer Aspire Go 15 (Intel Core 3 Processor N355, 8GB RAM, 128GB UFS) — $249.99
$299.99(save $50 with Prime) 🔥 -
Asus Vivobook 16 (Intel Core i5-13420H, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $449.99
$579.99(save $130 with Prime) 🔥 -
Asus Vivobook 14 (Snapdragon X, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD)— $549.99$699.99 (save $150 with Prime) 🔥 -
Acer Aspire 14 AI (Intel Core Ultra 5 226V, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $549.99
$879.99(save $330 with Prime) 🔥 -
Asus Vivobook 16 (Snapdragon X, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD— $599.99$799.99 (save $200) 🔥 -
Asus Vivobook 14 (AMD Ryzen AI 7 350, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $719.99
$849.99(save $130 with Prime) 🔥 -
Acer Swift Go 14 AI (Snapdragon X Plus, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $749.99
$999.99(save $250) 🔥 -
Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, 13-inch (Snapdragon X Plus, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $734.99
$899.99(save $165 with Prime) 🔥 -
Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, 13.8-inch (Snapdragon X Plus, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD)— $789.99$1,199.99 (save $410) 🔥 -
Asus Vivobook S16 (AMD Ryzen AI 7 350, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $999.99
$1,199.99(save $200 with Prime) 🔥 -
Acer Swift X 14 (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD)— $1,099.99$1,499.99 (save $400) 🔥 -
Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, 15-inch (Snapdragon X Elite, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,159.99
$1,699.99(save $540 with Prime) -
LG gram 14 (Intel Core Ultra 7 255H, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,284.99
$1,599.99(save $315 with Prime) 🔥 -
LG gram Pro 16 (Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD) — $1,684.99
$2,199.99(save $515 with Prime) 🔥 -
LG gram Pro 17 (Intel Core Ultra7 255H, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,684.99
$2,199.99(save $515 with Prime) 🔥
2-in-1 laptop deals
-
Microsoft Surface Pro 11, 12-inch (Snapdragon X Plus, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD)— $784.99$899.99 (save $115 with Prime) 🔥 -
Microsoft Surface Pro 11, 13-inch (Snapdragon X Plus, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $849.99
$1,199.99(save $350 with Prime) -
Asus Vivobook 14 Flip (Intel Core Ultra 5 226V, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $869.99
$999.99(save $130 with Prime) 🔥 -
Microsoft Surface Pro 11, 13-inch (Snapdragon X Elite, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $899.99
$1,399.99(save $500 with Prime) 🔥 -
Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 (Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD)— $1,249.99$1,599.99 (save $350 with Prime) 🔥
Gaming laptop deals
-
Asus TUF Gaming A15 (AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD)— $629.99$849.99 (save $220 with Prime) 🔥 -
Acer Nitro V (Intel Core i5-13420H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $649.99
$849.99(save $200 with Prime) -
MSI Thin 15 (Intel Core i7-13620H, Nvidia Geforce RTX 4050, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $839.99
$899.99(save $60 with Prime) -
Asus TUF Gaming F16 (Intel Core 5 210H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $849.99
$1,099.99(save $250 with Prime) -
Asus TUF Gaming A14 (AMD Ryzen AI 7 8845HS, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $899.99
$1,199.99(save $300 with Prime) 🔥 -
Asus ROG Strix G16 (Intel Core i7-14650HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,274.99
$1,499.99(save $225 with Prime) 🔥 -
MSI Katana A15 AI (AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS, Nvidia Geforce RTX 4070, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,349.99
$1,699.99(save $350 with Prime) -
Asus ROG Strix G16 (Intel Core i9-14900HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD)— $1,359.99$1,699.99 (save $340 with Prime) 🔥 -
MSI Katana 15 HX (Intel Core i9-14900HX, Nvidia Geforce RTX 5070, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD)— $1,417.99$1,679.99 (save $262 with Prime) 🔥 -
Alienware x16 R2 (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,597.99
$2,399.99(save $802 with Prime) -
Asus ROG Strix G16 (Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $1,999.99
$2,399.99(save $400 with Prime) 🔥 -
Asus ROG Strix G16 (Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD) — $2,399.99
$2,899.99(save $500 with Prime) 🔥 -
Alienware 18 Area-51 (Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD) — $2,969.99
$3,499.99(save $530 with Prime) 🔥
Chromebook deals
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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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