By Anna Tong

Artificial intelligence leader OpenAI is opening an office in Dublin, the Microsoft-backed company announced Thursday.

It is the company's third office. Its headquarters are in San Francisco and it announced it was opening a London office in June.

The Dublin office is starting small with three open jobs: international payroll specialist, a business role, and an Ireland policy and partnerships lead, though OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon said the company intends to open more roles in the near future.

The Dublin office will not be the company's European headquarters and there will not be an executive running the office, at least not yet, Kwon said.

"We like to grow deliberately and not too rapidly because we want to make sure that the culture of the company is established first in new offices before we scale up," Kwon told Reuters.

In opening a Dublin office, OpenAI is following a well-established American tech company strategy. In addition to access to a talent pool already familiar with the culture of companies like Meta and Google, Ireland is a good place to engage with Europe from a regulatory and business development standpoint, Kwon said.

Tax implications did not play a role in the decision, as OpenAI is not profitable, Kwon said.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is the second fastest-growing app in history, after Meta's Threads app. It has created both excitement and alarm, bringing OpenAI into conflict with regulators, particularly in Europe, where the company's mass data-collecting has drawn criticism from privacy watchdogs.

(Reporting by Anna Tong in San Francisco, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)