OpenAI opens its first Spain office

Emmanuel Marill, OpenAI's General Manager for EMEA, has confirmed the company will open its first office in Spain, located in Madrid, in the second half of 2026. The hub will be staffed by locally hired talent across customer relations, technical, and public policy roles, with the precise location and recruitment timelines to follow in the coming months.

OpenAI builds consumer and enterprise AI products on large language models, ChatGPT for end users, ChatGPT Enterprise and the API for businesses and developers, and Codex, an AI coding agent. It competes with Anthropic and Google for enterprise AI contracts across Spain and Europe. The Madrid opening formalises a revenue relationship that is already substantial: weekly active ChatGPT users in Spain have grown more than 40% year-on-year, placing the country among OpenAI's top five European markets, while Codex usage has multiplied eleven-fold since early 2026.

The commercial logic is anchored by two of Spain's largest global banks. BBVA is rolling out a multi-year ChatGPT Enterprise programme to all 120,000 employees globally, a ten-fold increase on its prior deployment. Santander is deploying the tool to more than 30,000 users across marketing, development, and customer service. At typical enterprise pricing, contracts of this scale run into tens of millions of dollars annually. A remote team cannot efficiently manage, renew, or deepen relationships of that size.

"Spain combines strong user demand, innovative companies, a dynamic startup ecosystem, and a government committed to AI." — Emmanuel Marill, General Manager EMEA, OpenAI.

Regulatory architecture is the other structural driver. OpenAI established its European headquarters in Dublin in 2023, explicitly to comply with the EU AI Act's requirement for a presence in the bloc. The Madrid office operates within that same network. Spain's Minister for Digital Transformation, Óscar López, has argued that the opening demonstrates that firm AI regulation makes the country "more competitive" rather than deterring investment. Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo described the decision as "a vote of confidence in Spain's economy," pointing to the country's growth trajectory, competitive energy costs, and skilled workforce.

The EU AI Act is therefore both a compliance obligation OpenAI must satisfy across its European footprint and a political asset the Spanish government is actively deploying to attract further AI investment.

The Madrid office removes the last operational friction point between OpenAI and its largest Spanish enterprise accounts, positions the company to compete for public-sector mandates under the EU AI Act before Anthropic or Google establish comparable local presence, and converts a fast-growing user base into a structured commercial pipeline.