Amazon makes Cambridge heart of Alexa and drone innovation with new offices

Amazon has reiterated its commitment to the UK by opening a new so-called Development Centre in the heart of Cambridge – three storeys of premium office space housing 400 employees dedicated to research for products from Amazon's AI-assistant Alexa to the brave new field of Prime Air drone deliveries. The new development joins Amazon's original Castle Park building in Cambridge to house an interdisciplinary team of engineers, scientists and researchers – dubbed Amazon Research Cambridge – dedicated to "pure innovation", according to Amazon's UK boss, Doug Gurr. "The UK has fantastic history of innovation, with hundreds of years at the absolute cutting edge of innovation, and that continues to be true today," said Gurr. "When picking a site for a development centre you have to start with where you find the world's best scientists, engineers and technologists. But it also has to be somewhere that people want to come and live. Cambridge is a fabulous town where people want to live and work."