Luma AI has taken a decisive step onto the global stage, opening its first international office in London and naming former WPP and Monks executive Jason Day to lead its EMEA expansion. This move follows a major $900 million Series C raise and signals Luma’s intent to partner closely with creative industries across the UK, Europe, and the Middle East including Saudi Arabia.
A strategic opening that’s more than a PR moment
Luma AI’s London office is not simply a satellite it’s a deliberate positioning inside one of the world’s most influential creative and advertising ecosystems. London remains a hub for agencies, film production, gaming studios, and global brands. By placing people on the ground, Luma aims to build products and partnerships that reflect local cultures, languages, and creative workflows rather than exporting a one-size-fits-all solution from Silicon Valley.
The company has said the London hub will drive business across the UK, the European Union, and the Middle East and Africa, shaping how Luma’s generative video and multimodal models are used by storytellers, advertisers, and studios. The timing follows Luma’s recent Series C financing and the build-out of global compute infrastructure resources the company needs as it scales.
Jason Day: a bridge between creative agencies and AI
Jason Day’s appointment as Head of EMEA brings a seasoned growth leader into the heart of Luma’s strategy. Day comes from major creative networks where he led global growth and partnerships, and his job will be to translate Luma’s technical strengths into practical workflows for agencies, brands, and production houses. Industry outlets report Day will focus on business development, strategic partnerships, and customer expansion outside the US.
For many creative teams, the barrier to adopting generative video and multimodal tools isn’t curiosity — it’s trust, cultural fit, and integration with existing pipelines. Day’s background working with agencies and production partners positions him to build that trust, champion local use cases, and help clients integrate Luma’s tools into their real projects. Expect Day to emphasize collaboration, shared testing, and pilot projects that demonstrate value quickly.
Jobs, talent, and the local economy
Luma plans to hire aggressively in London, with the company announcing around 200 roles to be added in 2026 spanning research, engineering, partnerships, and strategic development. That recruitment push underlines that this is a long-term investment hiring local talent to design, support, and scale products tailored to regional markets.
Those positions will be meaningful for the local creative tech ecosystem: engineers working on generative video models, product managers who understand media workflows, and partnerships teams that can navigate agency structures. For Londoners in creative tech, Luma’s arrival promises both opportunities and new reasons to collaborate locally rather than relocating to the US.
The funding behind the expansion — and Saudi connections
Luma’s international push is supported by a substantial capital raise. The company closed a $900 million Series C led by HUMAIN, a venture vehicle backed by large Middle Eastern investors, which has plans for major compute infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. This funding and the associated infrastructure plans are central to Luma’s ability to train and run the large-scale models that power products like Dream Machine and Ray3.
Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the round has drawn attention, reflecting the kingdom’s broader strategy to become a global AI leader through large investments and regional data centers. For Luma, the partnership opens access to world-scale compute and regional datasets, and it creates a bridge between Western creative industries and Gulf markets that are rapidly expanding their media and entertainment sectors.
What creatives can expect from Luma on the ground
Luma’s core offerings generative video models and multimodal tools that transform prompts, footage, and design inputs into finished scenes are aimed at accelerating storytelling while reducing repetitive production tasks. With a London presence, Luma plans to pilot real client projects that combine brand storytelling, advertising production, and entertainment workflows. This will help Luma refine features that matter: better integration with editing suites, culturally aware outputs, and pipelines that respect production timelines and budgets.
Practically, agencies and studios can expect faster onboarding support, local partnerships for co-productions, and tailored training programs for creative teams. Luma will likely forge relationships with production houses, post-production vendors, and academic labs in the region to co-design use cases that are both artistically ambitious and commercially viable.
Balancing innovation with responsibility
Generative video and large multimodal models raise questions about copyright, creative credit, and authenticity. Luma’s expansion creates an opportunity to set higher standards in practice: local legal frameworks, clearer content provenance, and industry agreements about how produced content credits data and human creators. Having an EMEA leader experienced in agency relations will be vital for negotiating those standards with clients and regulators.
Luma and its partners will need to be transparent about datasets, offer tools for verifying and attributing synthetic content, and provide guidance to agencies on ethical uses. Doing so will not only reduce friction with regulators but also build client confidence a necessary condition for enterprise deals in advertising and entertainment.
Why London — and why now?
London sits at the intersection of advertising, film, music, gaming, and tech startups a rich testbed for generative creative tools. Opening in London makes strategic sense: it provides access to world-class creative talent, a dense network of agencies and production shops, and a regulatory environment that’s increasingly engaged with AI governance. With the $900 million financing and planned compute capacity, Luma can pair heavy-duty model training with local product design and market testing.
Moreover, Luma’s explicit plan to expand into the EU and Saudi Arabia from the London hub signals a two-track approach: build products that serve global English-language production workflows while also localizing for Arabic and other regional markets a move that both broadens addressable markets and hedges geopolitical or regulatory risks.
Challenges ahead — competition and trust
Luma enters a competitive field where major cloud providers and established AI labs are also racing to offer creative models and production tools. To stand out, Luma must combine superior model quality with intuitive tools, partnership models that fit agency economics, and clear policy on rights and provenance. The London office and Day’s experience should help, but execution at the product and client level will determine success.
Trust will be a recurring theme. Agencies and studios are conservative where client budgets and reputations are concerned; they need guarantees about output quality, legal exposure, and turnaround. Luma will need to demonstrate strong, enterprise-grade support and predictable performance to scale beyond pilot projects.
The human story: ambition, adaptation, and collaboration
Beyond funding rounds and job numbers lies a human story that matters to creatives and professionals watching this shift. Luma’s expansion reflects the ambition of a small team scaling fast and the adaptation required by creatives learning new tools. Jason Day’s role is as much about people as product: translating technical capabilities into human workflows, building local teams, and helping industries adapt without losing their craft.
For many creative professionals, this moment is inspiring a reminder that technology can amplify stories, not replace storytellers, when introduced thoughtfully. Successful adoption will be the result of collaborative pilots, patient education, and mutual respect between technologists and artists.
Looking ahead: 2026 and beyond
In the short term, expect Luma to announce pilot partnerships, local hires, and targeted product integrations with creative tools. By 2026, the company aims to ramp hiring in London and begin deepening partnerships across EMEA. Over the next few years, the combination of London-based business development and Saudi-backed compute infrastructure could let Luma iterate more quickly on regionally tailored features and enterprise offerings.
If Luma can balance rapid innovation with responsible deployment and strong local partnerships, the company could become a major catalyst for creative production workflows across Europe and the Middle East enabling filmmakers, agencies, and game developers to prototype faster and produce richer content more affordably.
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