Facebook ‘committed’ to UK as it announces 800 more jobs in London

• Facebook will now have 2,300 employees in the U.K.
• The new office will also house a dedicated incubator space for start-ups
• Google has also made commitments to London as a tlarge base for its employees

Ben Lister

Facebook's new office in London.

Facebook is to create 800 new U.K. jobs next year within its new London office.

The move will take the social media giant's total employee presence in Britain to 2,300. The London office will be Facebook's largest engineering hub outside the U.S.

Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook's Europe, Middle East and Asia vice-president, praised the U.K. as a tech company base.

"The U.K.'s flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystem and international reputation for engineering excellence makes it one of the best places in the world to build a tech company," she said.

Mendelsohn added that the decision indicated Facebook was "more committed than ever to the U.K."

Ben Lister

An interior shot of Facebook's new London office.

The building near Oxford Circus in central London was designed by Frank Gehry, the architect best known for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. It will accommodate engineers, software developers and sales teams.

The new site will also house a dedicated incubator space for start-ups, called LDN_LAB.

Facebook's rival Google is to open a new headquarters in London and create 3,000 new jobs in the U.K. by 2020.