Imperial College London opens San Francisco hub, Imperial Global USA

Imperial College London announced on October 30, 2024, the launch of Imperial Global USA, a hub in San Francisco that it said makes it the first UK university with a permanent science and technology base in the United States. The university set a goal of creating 100 new US-UK science and technology partnerships in 2025.

The hub is intended to help Imperial researchers, spinouts and innovators find partners, funding and routes to scale on both sides of the Atlantic. An external advisory board, chaired by the chief executive of Alphabet-owned robotics software company Intrinsic, was created to connect the hub with the Bay Area technology community. Five founders from Imperial's women's entrepreneurship accelerator spent the launch week in San Francisco seeking partners and backers. Imperial cited existing collaborations with Agilent Technologies, with UC Berkeley and Rio Tinto on sustainable materials, and the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, funded by the Bezos Earth Fund.

Imperial linked the hub to its focus on convergence science and deep-tech entrepreneurship centered on its WestTech Corridor in London. The US base follows the university's earlier opening of an overseas research and innovation center in Singapore.