Tech Companies Invest £30 Billion in the UK During Trump's Visit to Britain
The United Kingdom's AI sector is experiencing a significant boost, as U.S. tech companies have announced a flurry of investments totalling £31 billion over the next few years. This influx of investment is seen as a vote of confidence in Britain's thriving AI sector by U.K. Tech Secretary Liz Kendall.
At the forefront of this investment wave is Microsoft, who have pledged to invest £22 billion in the U.K. over the next four years. Half of this investment will be directed towards AI infrastructure. Microsoft's President Brad Smith stated, "We're focused on British pounds, not empty tech promises."
The investments come ahead of the signing of a "Technology Prosperity Deal" between the U.K. and the U.S., due to take place on Thursday. This deal aims to strengthen co-operation on AI, quantum, space, and nuclear energy.
One of the key investments is made by AI cloud computing company CoreWeave, with General Manager International Mike Mattacola pledging a total of £1.5 billion in the U.K. This investment will include the expansion of a data center near Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, powered by renewable energy and using Nvidia chips.
Nvidia is also playing a significant role in these investments, with plans to ship up to 120,000 advanced GPUs to British data centers. Some of these GPUs will go to British data center firm Nscale, who will receive around half of the total.
The new data centers will be powered by Nvidia chips, and the first data centers for OpenAI's Stargate will be located on a former coal power station site in Northumberland, north-east England. Stargate UK will bring 8,000 GPUs to the country.
U.S. AI startup Scale AI has also announced it will invest more than £39 million in the U.K. over the next two years, expanding its European HQ in London and quadrupling its employees by the end of next year.
Google has also joined the investment drive, cutting the ribbon on a new data center in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, and committing to spending £5 billion in the U.K. over the next two years. Global asset manager BlackRock is also putting £500 million into U.K. data centers, including £100 million for the expansion of a site west of London.
Oracle has reaffirmed a previously-announced $5 billion investment in the U.K., and U.K. government has designated the site near Blyth as an AI Growth Zone. The U.K. is clearly attracting significant investment in its AI sector, and these investments are set to drive innovation and growth in the industry.
