To OpenAI? The closest was DeepMind but that's owned by Google now.

Well, deepseek open sourced their model and published their algorithm. It may take a while before it is reproduced but if they start an initiative and get the funding in place it'll probably be sooner rather than later.

Owned by Google yes, but it is head quartered in London, with the majority of the staff there.

So the skills, knowledge, and expertise are in the UK. Google can close the UK office tomorrow if they wanted to sure, but are 100% of those staff going to move to California? Doubt it. Some will, but a lot have lives in the UK (not least the CEO and founder etc) so even if Google pulls the rug I will bet there will be a new company founded and funded within days that will vacuum up all the staff.

But will this company be British or European? I'd love to think so, but somehow I doubt that. There just isn't the money in UK tech, the highest paid tech jobs (other than big tech) are elite hedgefunds but they get by with minimal headcount.

Mistral exists