{"id":31606,"date":"2025-10-29T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/?p=31606"},"modified":"2026-01-08T08:58:03","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T08:58:03","slug":"our-next-research-and-development-hub-berlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/our-next-research-and-development-hub-berlin\/","title":{"rendered":"Building our next R&D hub in Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are opening our next R&D hub in Berlin on January 19, 2026 to support significant investment in our AI customer service platform, Intercom, and market-leading AI Agent, Fin. <\/b><\/p>\n

We’ve already welcomed our first Berlin hires and intend to hire 100 people over the year ahead across engineering, AI, data science, product, and design.<\/p>\n

We believe that in a short number of years, the vast majority of customer service will be done by AI. Fin is already the world’s best Customer Service Agent. At <\/span>Pioneer<\/span><\/a>, our recent summit for AI customer service leaders in NYC, we talked about how Fin will become a true end-to-end <\/span>Customer Agent<\/span><\/a>, extending far beyond service. We showcased how companies like WHOOP, Anthropic, and Lightspeed are already pushing Fin in ways that help them grow their business.<\/span><\/p>\n

This market opportunity is massive and expanding at unprecedented pace. Our ambition is to earn our place as one of the most successful AI businesses during this wave of AI disruption, and we want more brilliant people on our team to pursue this as aggressively as possible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We are already on track to be one of the <\/span>fastest growing private software companies<\/span><\/a>. Fin is the primary contributor to this, and is months away from passing $100m in ARR. So far, more than <\/span>7000 businesses<\/span><\/a> have transformed their customer service with Fin, including German companies like electricity provider <\/span>Ostrom<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0smart home technology provider <\/span>tado\u00b0<\/span><\/a>, and grocery delivery company Flink<\/a>, along with global leaders like Vanta, Clay, Lovable, and Miro.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why Berlin<\/span><\/h2>\n

We are drawn to Berlin by its rare blend of deep technical talent and rich creative culture \u2013 all within a vibrant, globally connected city that\u2019s close to our R&D hubs in Dublin and London. It\u2019s a place where the best of the best engineers and designers thrive, and where people from around the world are eager to relocate and build ambitious products.<\/span><\/p>\n

We needed a new location that would help us sustain the incredibly high ambition and high standards held by our world class AI team in Dublin and London. Berlin has emerged as one of Europe\u2019s hottest centers for AI talent. The city is home to a high density of AI-focused startups, applied research labs, and practitioners with exceptional literacy, optimism, and ambition in this field. We see Berlin as a key accelerator for our AI hiring \u2013 a place where we can bring in some of the brightest minds to help shape the future of our product and business.<\/span><\/p>\n

While Intercom\u2019s reach is global with our headquarters in San Francisco, our R&D leadership remains anchored in Dublin, where half of the executive team sits \u2013 making Berlin both geographically and strategically an ideal next location for our growth.<\/span><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t our first time expanding our footprint; <\/span>we previously bet on London<\/span><\/a> and are delighted with how that\u2019s been working. When we shared our news internally, there was real excitement and high levels of people volunteering to help spin up Berlin successfully, including people who helped make London a big success, like Danny:<\/span><\/p>\n

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What we look for\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

We are looking for people who are excited by a high-intensity, high-ambition, high-standards working environment. We want people to help us build one of the world’s best AI companies.<\/span><\/p>\n

For people like that, this is an opportunity to have huge impact, growth and career progression. Just like we\u2019ve seen with London, and Dublin before it, the cohort of early hires in Berlin will have a disproportionate level of impact through their role in building a strong team and culture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We are in the middle of a huge disruptive wave with AI, and Fin is one of the leading examples of commercially successful AI applications. Joining Intercom is an opportunity to be part of this disruptive wave, and help us build out our vision for Fin becoming the world’s best Customer Agent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Join a culture of world-class engineering, AI, product, and design<\/span><\/h2>\n

There are plenty of AI companies to join, but what sets us apart is our technology and culture. Any AI product is only as good as the AI layer powering it. Ours is industry-leading, powered by a highly talented, ambitious, and technical team of over 40 machine learning scientists, engineers, and designers in Europe who continuously optimize Fin\u2019s performance through cutting-edge research, experimentation, and innovation.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Fin\u2019s average resolution rate increases 1% every month<\/p><\/div>\n

We also build in public and share our progress and learnings with the AI community at large. Recently, our Chief AI Officer Fergal Reid and SVP of Engineering Jordan Neill joined leaders from Cognition, Harvey, and Perplexity in San Francisco to share real lessons, challenges, and breakthroughs from <\/span>building frontier AI products<\/span><\/a>. Our AI team regularly publishes their insights on the <\/span>AI research blog<\/span><\/a>; from <\/span>optimizing inference speed<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>availability<\/span><\/a>, to <\/span>building our own proprietary models<\/span><\/a> that outperform general purpose models for CX.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Our AI group and the broader R&D org they operate within work at extraordinary scale and <\/span>speed<\/span><\/a>. We recognize that moving fast can\u2019t be taken for granted, you must fight for it, and we are doing just that, embracing the capabilities AI tooling brings us to achieve <\/span>2x<\/span><\/a> the throughput. One example of this mindset in practice is us <\/span>\u201cBetting on the future of frontend at Intercom,\u201d<\/span><\/a> making a technology choice that optimizes for our teams\u2019 ability to build high-quality product, fast.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our design and product teams are world-class and forward-thinking; they too are embracing the AI technology change to adapt how they work, as shared in our <\/span>3-point framework for AI-driven design<\/span><\/a> and recently presented by Emmet Connolly, our SVP of Design, at <\/span>this year’s Hatch conference in Berlin<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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As an engineer, I\u2019m extremely grateful to work alongside brilliant product and design thinkers. It gives me far higher confidence that my work will solve the right problem, solve it well, and have real impact.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where to find us in Berlin<\/span><\/h2>\n

Our new office will open on January 19, 2026 at Zimmerstra\u00dfe 78<\/a>. <\/span>You can learn more about our open roles, company, culture, and global offices on our <\/span>careers site<\/span><\/a>, or feel free to reach out to <\/span>me<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Jordan<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Fergal<\/span><\/a>, or <\/span>Brian<\/span><\/a> directly on LinkedIn if you have any questions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You can also follow us on LinkedIn<\/span><\/a> for updates as we expand our Berlin presence and share details on upcoming local events like:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n