Compare the Top 8 Pizza Ovens
Tips and FAQ
Who We Are and How We Tested
WIRED reviewer Adrienne So has tested many pizza ovens and made more than a thousand pizzas over the past seven years. WIRED reviewer Matthew Korfhage is a longtime food writer who’s written about pizza on both coasts over 15 years, from sausage slices in Portland to the story of Mexican pizza in Philadelphia.
We test each pizza oven over the course of a few weeks, using homemade dough (Adrienne likes Ooni’s classic pizza dough recipe), fresh dough balls procured from local pizzerias, store-bought fresh dough, and frozen pizzas. We use infrared thermometers to make sure the temperature of the cooking surface is consistent (and is what the built-in thermometer says it is). Where relevant, we also cross-check built-in thermometers on each oven against our own ambient thermometers.
Pizza ovens are also quite a bit more versatile than you might think. Over years of testing, Adrienne has used her pizza ovens to sear steaks, quick-cook salmon, and pan-fry broccoli. Matthew has air-fried wings in a pizza oven, grilled pork chops, charred asparagus, and blackened chicken.
It’s taken me many years, and many thousands of pizzas, to refine my pizza-making technique. And to be honest, my Neapolitan-style pizzas don’t really meet the standard set by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, the world authority on Neapolitan pizzas. (Ooni pizza ovens, including previous models of our top-rated Karu 2, are the only models we recommend that the AVPN has also recommended.)
But over the years, I have accumulated a few tips for those of you who find making a pizza to be a little bit awkward or intimidating. If you’ve refrigerated your dough, bring it to room temperature first. Sprinkle flour lightly on the peel before you stretch the dough across and assemble your pizza, to keep dough from sticking. (Some use cornmeal, but note that cornmeal can burn and become bitter in a hot oven.) Be patient and stretch your dough from the inside out. It is cheating, but I also am guilty of using a tiny rolling pin ($10) to help me get the dough as thin as possible.
An authentic Neapolitan pie will use a few specific ingredients. When you’re making your own dough, reach for 00 flour, which is milled specifically for pizza and pasta. Fresh mozzarella will make your pizza damp, so I use a mix of fresh and shredded, low-moisture cheese for the cheesiest, meltiest pie. If you’re not sticking to a strictly Neapolitan recipe, we also have a few favorite pies we’d like to recommend. Senior director Martin Cizmar and I like a good Buffalo pie with Frank’s Red Hot and pickles. I also recently tried Brightland’s Pizza Oil in a squeeze bottle; while it’s good as a finishing sauce to drizzle over pies, you could make your own for much cheaper by putting olive oil and herbs in a squeeze bottle.
Besides ‘zas, I cook everything from salmon to steak to chicken thighs in my pizza oven by preheating a cast iron pan in a hot oven and popping the food right in. For more guidance, Ooni has a cookbook; chef Francis Mallmann’s books are also a good source of inspiration. —Adrienne So
Is your patio already occupied by a giant Traeger? Your grill or smoker probably has a pizza attachment that you can buy for less than a new oven. Cizmar’s favorite is the Yoder Smoker wood-fired oven attachment ($499), which has saved him from many a night of pellet fire flameouts. It sits under the smoker’s hood, atop a steel sheet that sits over the firebox. The sheet is a diffuser and has holes of increasing size as you move away from the fire, so that the section farthest from the flame gets more exposure. The design provides a consistent temperature along the oven’s floor, and it works well, with the farthest corners of the oven still cresting 650 degrees Fahrenheit.
You can also turn your normal, indoor oven into a pizza oven. While most ovens max out at 500 degrees Fahrenheit, one way to impart more heat to your pizza is by preheating a baking surface with a high thermal mass, which maintains temperature stability and directly delivers its stored-up heat energy. An easy way to do this is by preheating a cast-iron pan or baking steel. A classic Lloyd pan is one preferred tool for Detroit- or Sicilian-style pan pizza, which works well in conventional ovens.
Several of our favorite grill and pizza oven manufacturers, like Kamado and Weber, also make ceramic pizza stones. Check out our guide to the Best Portable Grills and Grill Accessories for more.
Honorable Mentions
We’ve tried a lot of pizza ovens. Here are a few that we liked that didn’t quite make our top picks.
Photograph: Stove Pi Prime
Solo Stove Pi Prime for $450: The Solo Stove Pi Prime remains a very, very tight contender for our top gas oven pick. If you’ve heard of Solo Stove, it’s because of its smokeless, stainless steel fire pits. This made the company’s transition to high-heat pizza ovens more or less seamless. Instead of the conventional elongated design, the Pi Prime oven’s fuel attachments are long and slim and hug the back of the oven. This allows Solo Stove to keep its signature round, symmetrical design. This really is a great design, and this remarkably compact propane pizza oven has previously been among WIRED’s top picks. The cooking surface is large enough to accommodate a large Lodge cast-iron pan. If you have a small backyard, the top’s flat surface is a convenient storage space, and the stove doesn’t sacrifice any of its heating capabilities for these details. So why is the Koda 2 better than Solo Stove Pi Prime in our books? The Koda 2 allows for bigger 14-inch pies, and the broader opening makes launching a bit easier. (But note, if you live in a windy area, the Pi Prime offers better wind shielding than the Koda.)
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Halo Versa 16 for $499: At first blush, the Halo Versa 16 appears to offer much the same specs as the All-Clad gas-powered pizza oven, but for half the price. It’s got a rotating pizza stone, room for a 16-inch pie, and a clever extra feature: a little heater under the pizza stone. This said, the built-in thermometer isn’t accurate (at all!), and insulation isn’t the best, leading to a hot exterior. The oven doesn’t reach its advertised top temps of 950 degrees Fahrenheit, though it can generally heat the stone to about 800 degrees. Consider this a better oven for New York–style pies, at a quite affordable price when you take into account the rotating stone.
Gozney
Gozney Roccbox for $499: When Adrienne So first reviewed the dual-fuel Gozney Roccbox, she praised the fast recovery time that has made the Roccbox popular among pizza pop-up chefs, allowing her to make 10 pies in less than 30 minutes when cooking pizza with propane. That said, few home pizza makers need such throughput, and the 44-pound device is heavier than other competitors. The optional woodbox was oppressively difficult to use, for those who want the ability to cook with fire. But the Gozney’s price, previously among the most expensive entrants, now seems downright reasonable. And Matthew Korfhage’s experience using the default propane option has been good, with terrific temperature stability.
Ooni Karu, First Edition for $349: Ooni is still selling the previous generation oven of WIRED’s top pick, the Karu 2, for about $100 less. Like other Ooni pizza ovens, OG Karu is an excellent oven—light, portable, and easy to clean—and WIRED reviewer Adrienne So couldn’t stop using the thing after first testing it. Nonetheless the newer Karu 2 heats more evenly, and holds more fuel than the first-generation oven.
Ooni Koda 12 for $399: The original Ooni Koda 12 is a mere 21 pounds, making it the most light and portable Koda. Its thin, powder-coated steel shell insulates well enough that it remains cool to the touch, even when the fire is burning. Just slide in the baking stone, screw on the propane tank, and you’re ready to go. The door fits 12-inch pizza peels and 10-inch cast-iron skillets. However, you should not store it outside.
Photograph: Breville
Breville Pizzaiolo for $800: The Breville Pizzaiolo was our prior top-pick electric pizza oven, and like a lot of Breville devices it offers beauteous ease of use and admirable technological sophistication, with three separate heating elements and two sensors that make sure each part of your pie is perfectly cooked. Where the first-generation Ooni Volt edged it out was with better insulation, a higher max temperature, and more versatility for cooking other things besides pizza. Note, however, that the Volt will soon be fully phased out for the second-generation Volt 2, which follows Breville’s lead in moving toward greater automation.
Cuisinart 3-in-1 Propel Pizza Oven and Grill for $600: This Cuisinart Propel 3-in-1 offers an ingenious design. It’s a four-burner stand-up grill and griddle that’s perfectly good for burgers or pancakes—but with a pizza stone and mount, and a domed pizza lid. A smoked-glass door and temperature gauge lets you monitor your pie and turn your pizza without losing all the heat, while the side griddle means you can even cook toppings or sauces on the same device, without having to wander inside and outside. The extra workspace offered by the side tables is likewise truly welcome. But there are trade-offs to this versatility. You can heat your stone above 900 degrees Fahrenheit without trouble, but you won’t get reliable ambient baking temps above 750. And so there’s a bit of a learning curve. You’ll want to turn your middle burners down but leave the side burners on, to cook something between a New York pie and a Neapolitan. The build’s also a little clattery, and the poorly made burner knobs have an irritating habit of slipping on their pegs. This last flaw knocked this oven down to our honorable mentions, despite the Propel’s cleverness and versatility.
Photograph: Adrienne So
Ninja Wood-Fired Oven for $300: If you’re looking for a remarkably sturdy and versatile outdoor oven, this is a pretty good pick with a top temperature of 700 degrees Fahrenheit. The door is a little sticky, which makes baking pizza at high heat a little tricky, but if you want one device that can do everything from smoking a pork shoulder to making muffins to bake a pizza pie, this is your pick.
The Piezano for $100: This TikTok-popular oven is affordable, small, and convenient. It looks a little like a waffle iron, and comes with handy double paddles for easier placement. Astonishingly, its claims of heating the top and bottom elements to 800 degrees Fahrenheit are accurate, and it takes about 15 minutes, which allows for short cook times. But note the heating element at the top doesn’t cover the whole surface area, so you have to rotate your pies pretty frequently. Also, opening the top like a waffle maker means that it doesn’t retain heat very well. It dropped by 100 to 200 degrees between pies and requires a bit of recovery time.
Also Tested
Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Current Backyard Model P for $699: No less a TV food personage than Alton Brown has signed on as an endorser of this 1,750-watt electric indoor/outdoor pizza oven, which will heat to 850 degrees Fahrenheit using a standard power outlet. Heat is relatively even across the oven, and it’ll get up to top temp in around 30 minutes. But cook settings are constrained to a few preset levels (New-York style, thin crust, Neapolitan, frozen), whose temps and cooking times can be a bit fussy to fiddle with. The app and on-device controls tend to offer more quirks than functionality. Display temp and actual temp don’t always match, and its top thermal elements turn on and off like the lights in a David Lynch movie, according to what the company calls a proprietary algorithm. Still, you can make a great pizza on this thing, and you can make it indoors. Current says it plans to add more functions and cooking modes in future updates, and we’ll keep testing. But it feels less than fully baked at the moment, especially at its price.
Pizzacraft Pizzaque for $130: This oven is adorable and affordable, and you can stand it in your driveway and cook a good pizza while sitting in your camp chair. However, it just doesn’t get as hot or cook as evenly as a better-insulated oven does.
The Best Accessories
Some pizza ovens provide you with proprietary accessories to set you on your pizza path. But we’ve also found a few extras to be helpful along the way:
A handheld infrared thermometer for $11: Even if the oven has a built-in thermometer, a handheld infrared thermometer is a great way to check the temperature on different areas of the pizza stone. It’s also important to make sure the stone has time to reheat after each pizza. For pizza purposes, this affordable one should be accurate enough to suit your needs.
A wooden pizza peel for $34: If you own multiple peels, it’s quick and easy to prep one pizza while another is baking. WIRED reviewers Adrienne So and Matthew Korfhage each own several peels, including a useful small turning peel. But for launching, the dough is much less likely to stick on a wooden peel, especially if you first sprinkle on some semolina or flour.
A cast-iron skillet for $25: You can also use a cast-iron pan in your pizza oven to sear steaks or pan-roast broccoli. Lodge’s pans work just as well as much more expensive options.
Heat-resistant gloves for $20: That cast iron gets extremely hot, so you’ll also need a good pair of mitts. (Even these won’t protect your hands for long, so you’ll need a place near the oven to set the pan down.)
Fire starters for $20: If you’ve ever been intimidated by the idea of cooking with wood, don’t be! These fire starters make it quick and simple. Just light the end with a match, drop it in the fuel tray, and line up a few oak sticks on top. Be sure to keep your wood dry if you don’t want to create a smoke stack in your backyard.
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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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