Nikolay Savinov has moved from DeepMind to OpenAI's London office, where he will continue work on pretraining and long-context modeling while helping grow the local training group. The announcement, posted directly by Savinov, notes several years spent on these topics and points to an active recruitment effort for additional researchers via a dedicated hiring contact.
Samuel L Smith#1498
Excited to share that I’ve joined OpenAI in London to work on pretraining!
I’ve spent the last few years on pretraining and long-context, and I’ll be helping grow the London team. We’re hiring exceptional researchers, please reach out: london-training-hiring@openai.com
Immediately before the move Savinov served as Staff Research Scientist at DeepMind London, contributing to LLM pre-training for Gemini and co-leading work that produced 10-million-token context windows in Gemini 1.5. That background travels with him, though exact start date, title, and reporting line at OpenAI remain unstated.
The post explicitly ties the hire to expanding the London pretraining unit and lists an email for exceptional candidates, yet no linked model release, compensation figures, or confirmation of other recent arrivals are provided. Timing aligns with ongoing scaling of the office's contributions to recent releases, but downstream effects stay unspecified.
Users reacted to Nikolay Savinov joining OpenAI London to lead pretraining research, with some congratulating him and expressing excitement about his contributions, while others called the role a scam or objected to the association.
Extremely excited to work with Nikolay!
The OpenAI London team has led huge wins on every model release we've had in the last year, and is all-around awesome :) Nikolay is an incredible addition, and if you're interested in joining, please reach out to him or I!
Excited to share that I’ve joined OpenAI in London to work on pretraining!
I’ve spent the last few years on pretraining and long-context, and I’ll be helping grow the London team. We’re hiring exceptional researchers, please reach out: london-training-hiring@openai.com
Excited to share that I’ve joined OpenAI in London to work on pretraining!
I’ve spent the last few years on pretraining and long-context, and I’ll be helping grow the London team. We’re hiring exceptional researchers, please reach out: london-training-hiring@openai.com
London 🔥
Excited to share that I’ve joined OpenAI in London to work on pretraining!
I’ve spent the last few years on pretraining and long-context, and I’ll be helping grow the London team. We’re hiring exceptional researchers, please reach out: london-training-hiring@openai.com
@SavinovNikolay Welcome :-)
@SavinovNikolay Welcome Nikolay!!! We're lucky to have you :)
@SavinovNikolay
Formal role details / applications here: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/6fdc9e35-c9d9-49fb-a8f7-80d2d7f03968
But if you’re potentially interested and want to discuss fit first, feel free to email the alias above.
@SavinovNikolay @SamuelMLSmith Can't say I'm surprised 😂 congrats both sides!
@SavinovNikolay Welcome!
@SavinovNikolay @sama Hahaha update! 🩵🫶 ✨enjoy your day🔅
@SavinovNikolay Welcome!
@SavinovNikolay @SebastienBubeck Congrats Nikolay! Very excited to see your impact!
@SavinovNikolay @sama Are you a full time goblinmaxxer then?
@SavinovNikolay Welcome!!
@SavinovNikolay @sama Do you hire hobbyists (not a research but I have been training my tiny LLMs)?
@SavinovNikolay welcome!
@SavinovNikolay @SebastienBubeck Congrats Nikolay! Great run at GDM 👏
@SavinovNikolay Welcome!!!
@SavinovNikolay Welcome!
@SavinovNikolay Congrats!!
