Nvidia-backed video generation startup Luma AI is preparing to establish a major presence in London, marking a significant step in the U.S. tech company’s international expansion strategy.
The Palo Alto-based firm plans to hire approximately 200 employees at its new London base by early 2027, accounting for around 40% of its workforce, across research, engineering, partnerships, and strategic development.
The expansion follows a $900 million Series C funding round led by Saudi Public Investment Fund-owned AI company Humain, which brought Luma’s valuation to over $4 billion. The startup had previously received backing from Nvidia. CEO and co-founder Amit Jain highlighted that the Series C funding, alongside the planned build-out of global compute infrastructure, provides the capital and capacity to deploy world-scale AI capabilities directly to creative industries worldwide.
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Luma AI is focused on developing “world models,” AI systems capable of learning from video, audio, images, and text. These models are designed to complement and extend the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Currently, Luma targets marketing, advertising, media, and entertainment sectors through its API and content creation suite, enabling enterprises to integrate AI-powered video generation into their operations.
Jain emphasized London’s strategic value for Luma’s European expansion, citing access to top-tier research talent from universities and institutions like DeepMind, as well as the city’s position as a gateway to the European market. “Launching across Europe and the Middle East is the logical next step in putting this power directly in the hands of storytellers, agencies, and brands globally,” he said.
A Broader AI Industry Expansion
Luma’s move reflects a wider trend of North American AI startups establishing bases in Europe to access talent, regulatory stability, and market opportunities. In November, San Francisco-based Anthropic announced plans for offices in Paris and Munich, following earlier hires in London and Dublin. Canadian AI startup Cohere set up a Paris office as its EMEA headquarters in September, and OpenAI inaugurated a Munich office in February.
The focus on “world models” represents a significant evolution in AI applications. While these visual models currently trail LLMs by approximately a year to a year and a half, researchers consider them potentially crucial to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). Jain predicts that as video content consumption continues to dominate daily digital activity, world models will emerge as the “natural interface” for AI in routine life. Major tech players, including Google, Meta, and Nvidia, are also actively developing world models for diverse use cases.
In September, Luma released its latest model, Ray3, which benchmarks above OpenAI’s Sora and at comparable levels to Google’s Veo 3, demonstrating the startup’s competitive positioning in the rapidly advancing AI sector. The London expansion, combined with heavy investment and technical development, positions Luma as a key player in the AI industry’s explosive growth phase.
The AI sector continues to experience unprecedented expansion, driven by the adoption of generative AI, machine learning platforms, and compute-intensive models. Nvidia, as a leading GPU supplier, has been a major beneficiary, powering the backbone of AI model training and inference. Startups like Luma AI illustrate how specialized applications, such as video generation, are becoming commercialized across creative, industrial, and enterprise domains.
This period of AI growth is believed to have prompted both investment and talent shifts globally. Companies are establishing international offices to tap into local expertise while positioning themselves to serve regional markets. With multibillion-dollar valuations, startups are attracting strategic investors like Humain and Nvidia to fund infrastructure-intensive AI development.
Analysts note that as these models scale and integrate with enterprise systems, demand for AI-capable hardware, cloud compute, and skilled engineers will surge, fueling a cycle of further investment and innovation.
Jain highlighted the role of AI in transforming industries beyond text and chat-based applications, emphasizing video and multimodal AI as crucial to the future of creative content. The integration of AI into production workflows, advertising, marketing, and media operations reflects the broader trend of AI as both a business accelerator and a technological disruptor across sectors.
Thus, the expansion move by Luma AI exemplifies the convergence of innovation, talent mobility, and strategic investment that characterizes the current phase of rapid AI industry growth.