Scotland votes to freeze datacentres as UK AI strategy faces scrutiny over phantom investments

Scotland weighs datacentre freeze that could stall UK AI

The SNP's national council has voted to freeze every new datacentre in Scotland. If ministers agree, it could stall a core pillar of the UK's AI strategy. Scotland's governing party wants to freeze every new datacentre in the country. If ministers agree, a core pillar of the UK's AI strategy could stall. The Scottish government is weighing a sweeping moratorium on new datacentres. Last Sunday, the Scottish National Party (SNP) voted to freeze all new builds, the Guardian reports. The motion now sits with ministers. As drafted, the freeze could cover every datacentre project that has not yet won planning permission. The exact scope is for the government to set. Lesley Backhouse, a councillor from one of the constituencies behind the motion, called the current plans "extreme overdevelopment". Why Scotland matters to the AI plan British officials have pushed Scotland as the prime home for datacentres, thanks to its plentiful renewable energy. That makes a freeze awkward. It could halt sites such as the Lanarkshire "AI growth zone". That project anchors the plan to build national AI infrastructure across rural Britain. The numbers stand out. The SNP resolution counts 24 "hyperscale" projects at various planning stages in Scotland. Together, it says, they would draw more than one-and-a-half times the power the country uses at peak demand. Graham Simpson, a member of the Scottish parliament for North Lanarkshire, was blunt. He wants "a proper piece of work at the government level" on how many datacentres Britain needs. He added that few people oppose datacentres outright. A wider reckoning The vote lands amid growing doubts about the UK's AI push. Take North Tyneside. The Guardian recently found its "growth zone" looked more like a publicity stunt than a viable project, despite OpenAI's backing. Other big schemes proved to be "phantom investments". The worry runs deeper than hype. The datacentre boom strains grids and pushes up power bills elsewhere. Andy Burnham, the favourite to replace Keir Starmer, reportedly wants a review of the technology policy. The sovereignty question Chi Onwurah, who chairs the Commons science and technology committee, called the wider strategy "very opportunistic". Her committee urged the next government to guard its access to critical technology. The warning has teeth. Last month the White House restricted foreign access to the most powerful tools from Anthropic, a leading US AI firm. That, the committee said, shows Britain "may not be able to count on even its allies". Europe already scrambles to keep its access. Why it matters A freeze would not end AI in Britain. Datacentres will still rise, in Scotland and beyond. But the vote marks a shift. Communities and politicians want a say in where the boom lands. They also want proof the jobs will materialise. Governments keep pouring billions into datacentre build-outs and national AI plans. Scotland's message is simple. Consent, power, and local benefit now weigh as much as raw capacity. Ministers must decide whether one of Britain's best sites stays open for business.

OpenAI never visited its Stargate UK site, Guardian finds

A Guardian investigation found OpenAI apparently never visited a key site for its Stargate UK data centre project before it was announced. The partnership was paused in April 2026, and a previous investigation found the designated supercomputer site was a scaffolding yard with no evidence of construction. OpenAI apparently failed to visit a key site earmarked for its Stargate UK data centre project before the initiative was announced, the Guardian reported on Friday. The revelation deepens questions about whether the UK government's flagship AI infrastructure programme was built on press releases rather than due diligence. Stargate UK, a partnership between OpenAI, Nvidia, and British cloud provider Nscale, was unveiled in September 2025 during Donald Trump's state visit to the UK. The project promised up to 8,000 Nvidia GPUs deployed at sites in north-east England by Q1 2026, scalable to 31,000 over time, and sat within a broader £31 billion package of tech investments that the government presented as proof of Britain's AI competitiveness. The scaffolding yard The Guardian had previously investigated the project's physical reality in March 2026, when reporter Aisha Down visited the site of Nscale's planned supercomputer in Loughton, Essex. She found a functioning scaffolding yard with no evidence that construction had begun on a facility that Nscale had said would be operational by the end of 2026. Nscale announced in September 2025 that it had "confirmed" its UK investment by purchasing the Loughton site and promised 23,040 Nvidia GPUs running by early 2027. Land records at the time showed no evidence of Nscale's ownership, with the site still registered to a different company. The unsigned contract The March investigation also found that the UK government had issued a press release describing a £1.9 billion investment contract with Nscale, but no such contract had been signed. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology admitted it was "not playing an active role in auditing these commitments." The government's AI Opportunities Action Plan, published in January 2025, cited £14 billion in private commitments to UK AI infrastructure. Those figures relied on company self-reporting rather than audited disclosures, a method the Guardian described as producing "phantom investments." The pause OpenAI formally paused Stargate UK in April 2026, citing the high cost of industrial electricity in Britain, which is roughly four times higher than in the United States, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. It also cited unresolved regulatory questions around AI and copyright. A spokesperson said the company would "continue to explore Stargate UK" when "regulation and the cost of energy enable long-term infrastructure investment." No planning applications had been lodged and no construction had begun at Cobalt Park, the primary Stargate UK site near Newcastle. Where the money went instead While Stargate UK stalled, Nscale invested €695 million in Portugal to supply 66,000 Nvidia Rubin GPUs to a Microsoft data centre campus in Sines. The company, which reached a $14.6 billion valuation in two years, found more favourable energy prices and planning conditions on the continent. Nscale's smaller UK project with BT and Nvidia, providing up to 14 megawatts of sovereign AI capacity across three existing BT sites, is proceeding. But it is a fraction of what Stargate UK had promised, and its modest scale underlines the gap between the government's AI ambitions and what the market is willing to build in Britain at current electricity prices. The pattern The UK government continued to announce large AI investment figures at London Tech Week in June 2026, including pledges from AMD and Nebius. Whether those commitments face the same scrutiny as Stargate UK remains to be seen. The Stargate UK episode exposes a structural weakness in how the UK counts AI investment. The government tallies pledges at the announcement stage but does not verify them, creating a gap between press releases and data centres that can be measured in years, or as a separate report on the UK's AI-climate conflict warned, may never close at all.

Scotland could freeze datacentre projects in challenge to UK's AI strategy

Scottish government to consider SNP national council motion for moratorium on all new datacentres The Scottish government is about to consider a sweeping moratorium on building new datacentres, putting a key plank of the UK's AI strategy at risk. Last Sunday the Scottish National party (SNP)'s national council passed a motion to freeze all new datacentres in Scotland. That motion has been sent to the Scottish government to consider. It could apply to all datacentre projects that have not yet received planning permission - although its exact implementation is up to the Scottish government to decide. Lesley Backhouse, who attended the national council meeting, said that Scotland's current datacentre plans amounted to "overdevelopment" and were "intrusive and not keeping with the local environment". The move emerged as the Guardian on Monday revealed how the developer and the UK government misrepresented the technical feasibility of a massive datacentre hub in Scotland in the face of community fears that their land would be subsumed by the development, and promised jobs and investments would never materialise. This site, in Lanarkshire, was to be an "AI growth zone", a key element of the government's strategy to build national AI infrastructure in rural areas of Britain. The SNP's resolution came amid signs of a wider upheaval in the UK's AI strategy as Andy Burnham prepares to replace Keir Starmer in Downing Street. He is reportedly considering a review of several critical planks of Starmer's technology policy. The Guardian previously reported that an "AI growth zone" in North Tyneside was more of a publicity stunt than a viable project, despite being supposedly backed by the maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI. Several other big UK AI projects have been found to be "phantom investments" after the government failed to audit investment numbers or jobs claims. "I don't think anyone is arguing that we should not have any datacentres in the UK or Scotland," said Graham Simpson, a member of the Scottish parliament representing North Lanarkshire. "But there needs to be a proper piece of work at the government level to decide how many the country needs and what is our capacity for them, in terms of our resources." A moratorium on datacentres in Scotland could strike at the heart of the UK's wider AI strategy. British officials have pushed Scotland as the prime location for datacentres due to its access to plentiful renewable energy. The SNP's resolution could halt projects such as the Lanarkshire AI growth zone. The SNP resolution suggests that the number of massive datacentres planned in Scotland could overwhelm its renewables capacity. It says there are 24 "hyperscale" datacentre projects in various stages of planning in Scotland. Combined, they would use more than one-and-a-half times the power Scotland uses at peak demand. "It is extreme overdevelopment. I'm very supportive of the local community and their endeavours to prevent this from happening," said Backhouse. Meanwhile, the chair of the Commons science and technology select committee, Chi Onwurah, on Monday criticised the UK's broader AI investment strategy, saying that without a proper plan for achieving sovereignty it has been "very opportunistic". She characterised the process as "X or Y or Z says they're going to invest [and so] we'll take that as part of an investment plan and then the investments aren't realised". She also said that the Starmer government's plan for AI growth zones had been affected by "a lack of clarity that they were about ensuring that the benefits of AI were felt in the place". "They weren't matched, as I suppose Andy Burnham might put it, by a comprehensive place-based strategy to make sure that happened," she said. Meanwhile Onwurah's committee called on the next government to set out how it intends to protect its sovereignty in AI and said: "It is essential to ensure that the UK cannot be cut off from key technologies at the whim of a foreign government." The warning comes after the White House last month blocked foreign access to the most powerful tools made by the leading US AI company Anthropic. The cross-party committee said the White House's temporary export ban "should be a powerful reminder that the UK may not be able to count on even its allies for access to vital technology." "I hope the incoming administration will learn from the mistakes of its predecessors and move quickly to create a clear plan for how it will work internationally on science and technology," Onwurah said. The call for greater sovereignty came as the government released more details of the nine companies it has supported so far under the £500m Sovereign AI Fund launched to back homegrown AI founders in April. Four of the nine companies so far awarded cash investment in offers to use the government's supercomputers in Bristol and Cambridge are ultimately controlled by American firms, according to a freedom of information response.

'It's smoke and mirrors': hope turns to fear in Scottish village chosen for AI datacentre

Suspicions grow in Lanarkshire that local people have been misled on supposed benefits of the huge development The promise was that a Scottish community would be transformed by massive investment and empowered to chase "the jobs of the future". Instead, local people in Lanarkshire fear they may have to sell their properties and lose green belt land because of the errors of a badly planned AI datacentre complex, even as those jobs and investments never arrive. Late last year, representatives of Oakes Energy Services began to knock on doors in Newarthill, a village east of Glasgow. In letters reviewed by the Guardian, they invited residents to individual meetings. They told them about plans for a solar farm, say local people, and made offers: free solar panels, tree planting, or even cash for their properties. "It was a sweetener: don't oppose this and you'll be OK, kind of thing," said Diane Davidson, a resident. "None of these sweeteners are enforceable, there's nothing written down." Two months later, the government chose Lanarkshire as a key site for the UK's AI plans, announcing a multibillion-pound development called an "AI growth zone". The project is to be built by the US company CoreWeave, and DataVita, an arm of a Glasgow real-estate firm. What will be built in Lanarkshire are AI datacentres: essentially, large buildings full of specialised silicon chips. The chips do the calculations that underpin AI models. All over the world, tech companies are ploughing hundreds of billions of dollars into building AI datacentres. They are doing this banking on the idea that AI will transform the global economy, and the datacentres will pay for themselves. To be successful, they need to quickly put up giant infrastructure projects in communities such as Newarthill. When the announcement came, the press release suggested a sprawling site - one that would bring "datacentres, supportive infrastructure, and a renewables park". Promises came with this announcement: 3,400 new "high-value" jobs and a community fund to inject "up to £543m" into local programmes over the next few years. At first, the community was not concerned. "The datacentre itself is not much. It's just a big imposing building," said Davidson. Then they realised the project would require vast amounts of energy - and therefore vast amounts of land. "The quantities it would need, it would definitely approach into our area," Davidson said. "It was like: oh, crikey. It was just growing arms and legs the more we looked into it." They began to worry about Oakes Energy Services, and another company, Locogen, which recently submitted a planning application for a solar farm adjacent to the site on behalf of a larger international energy group. A Guardian investigation has examined public plans for the AI growth zone in Lanarkshire, one key site in the government's ambitious push to bring massive AI development to communities across Britain. It finds that these plans appear to misrepresent the government's - and DataVita's - actual intentions for the development of the site. In particular, the government and DataVita publicly said the site would be powered by huge quantities of "on-site" renewable energy - until, when pressed by the Guardian, they admitted that the AI growth zone would actually connect to Britain's straining grid. What remains unclear is how much renewable energy the site still plans to build. DataVita has said it will have 1GW of power, supplied by energy parks connected directly to its datacentres. This would require, by conservative estimates, 44 sq km of land near its site. At present, DataVita appears to have less than a 10th of this. There is no apparent connection between Oakes Energy Services and DataVita but the appetite of both companies for energy parks has led Davidson and others to fear the land that will make up the difference will be theirs. Across the UK, a promised AI boom is driving a speculative rush as owners of industrial sites, investors and property developers try to cash in on promises of datacentre investment. This has led to hundreds of companies applying to build datacentres - and investors strategising on ways to turn empty land, or old industrial sites, into more productive assets. Oakes Energy Services did not respond to a query from the Guardian. Locogen said it had nothing to do with DataVita, the developer of the AI growth zone, and was not involved in any pre-application consultations with local people. DataVita has said it has no commercial connection with Locogen or Oakes. However, materials that DataVita submitted to the government about its plans to develop the site appear to suggest it does plan to use the surrounding area, solar farms or not, to power its datacentre. An audit done by the Scottish government, obtained under freedom of information (FoI) rules, says Datavita's proposal "leverages the region's strength as a renewable energy hub by proposing that available, adjacent land at both sites is used to build renewable energy parks that will feed the hyperscalers and AI innovation parks". Local people have pressed Datavita and the energy companies about their development plans and come back empty-handed. In a meeting in April, representatives of the energy companies refused to answer when questioned directly about who their customer was, said Meghan Gallacher, a member of the Scottish parliament who represents the region. "I don't believe in relation to the planning proposal that the company has been honest in relation to how it's engaged with local residents," she said. "There has been, in my view, some doubts in relation to the information that's been forthcoming, the questions that they're willing to answer." DataVita told the Guardian that all proposals were subject to local and national planning legislation through an open public process at every stage, and that it welcomed feedback and engagement throughout. The Lanarkshire growth zone has reawakened old fears in Airdrie, just over four miles from Newarthill. For 10 years, local people fought a proposal to develop a community park on land owned by the daughters of the late Tory minister William Whitelaw. In 2017, a group of prominent Scottish businesspeople announced plans to turn the site into a multimillion-pound luxury housing development called EuroPark. Among them were Graeme Souness, a former Scotland football player, and members of the Gillespie family, a local mining dynasty. Last June, said Davidson, the community felt they had won a victory: the site's plans were rebuffed by local authorities, and then again on appeal to the Scottish government. Now it feels that victory was temporary. Ann Glen, a local historian and author, said: "Now we're back here, and instead of this EuroPark, we have a datacentre." Davidson said: "Everybody is quite agitated and quite worried about it. Nobody is getting any benefit out of it. They are worried about their property values going down." The potential upsides of the Lanarkshire development for the people of Airdrie are thinner than the government has announced. The Guardian understands there is no money currently in the £543m community fund; rather, this is planned to come from DataVita revenues, if it generates them. Meanwhile, the Scottish charity Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) filed an FoI request to the government to understand how it arrived at the figure of 3,400 jobs. It found that the figure came from industry estimates for another site - Cambois in Northumberland - multiplied to account for the fact that Lanarkshire is a larger site. APRS found those industry estimates were inflated, and suggested there was no evidence that the Lanarkshire site could directly employ hundreds of people as the press release suggests. Instead, most of the jobs the site could create would be temporary construction jobs. "Our conclusion is that the UK government figures given in their press release could be a hundred times bigger than the probable jobs that the datacentre will create," wrote APRS. The Guardian understands that the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology stands by its estimate, which includes figures for roles created in the datacentre's construction phase, its supply chain, and the wider regional economy. The local people who are supposed to be the recipients of this promised largesse may be those who pay the steepest cost. North Lanarkshire includes some of Scotland's most deprived regions, towns that were once centred around coal and steelworks, and that now have some of the worst health outcomes in western Europe, said Glen. Dozens of people have expressed their fears, in online forums and on North Lanarkshire's portal, about how the energy developments and the datacentre are proceeding, and the confusing and contradictory information being put out about the future of their land. Glen said the entire policy around the AI growth zone was condescending to the "hardworking people" who were supposed to benefit from the project. "It's again smoke and mirrors. Smoke and mirrors," she said. "People thinking that - jobs - oh, phenomenal, what will it be like? A new age! But they're being misled in a way, there's no jobs. They don't realise to what extent they're being conned." The announcement "gives you the impression of poor aspiration. Poor aspiration. Just a job. Anything will do."

Revealed: landmark Scottish AI project has no prospect of meeting renewables promise

Exclusive: Government and developers privately acknowledged Lanarkshire datacentre site had power provision 'issue' A landmark AI development billed as delivering jobs and prosperity has misrepresented its plans to channel a nuclear reactor's worth of power to a site in rural Scotland, a Guardian investigation has found. When it was announced in January, the government promised that an £8.2bn AI datacentre complex in Lanarkshire - built by the US firm CoreWeave and the Scottish company DataVita - would be powered entirely from on-site renewables and built by 2030. The AI datacentre complex represented a large part of Britain's ambitions to keep up in the global AI race by building the infrastructure that underpins artificial intelligence. A central plank of the project's viability was its ability to power itself. But documents obtained through freedom of information (FoI) requests and analysis of public records suggest the datacentre has no prospect of meeting that goal. The Guardian obtained internal correspondence showing that the government and the site's developers, even as they publicly promised that the Lanarkshire site would have up to 1GW of "new energy infrastructure", were privately acknowledging that the site had an "issue" with "power provision" and that this would not happen. In response to questions from the Guardian, the government said the Lanarkshire complex would connect to the grid. This means it will either join a years-long queue or be expedited ahead of hundreds of other projects also vying for a connection. A government spokesperson said the site's needs would still be met "overwhelmingly" with renewables. The findings raise critical doubts over the UK's ability to confront the key question now facing the world's massive AI buildout: how to provide the extraordinary energy required to make it plausible. 'At best indicative, at worst complete bunk' AI datacentres are, essentially, buildings full of very specialised silicon chips. The chips do the calculations that underpin artificial intelligence models. The world's biggest tech companies are now ploughing hundreds of billions of dollars into the buildout of AI datacentres. Behind all this spending is the belief that AI will fundamentally transform the global economy, and that once it does, the AI datacentres will pay for themselves. The question of whether AI is a boom or bubble now largely rests on huge infrastructure projects such as Lanarkshire. The new details are not the first signal of problems in the UK's burgeoning datacentre industry. In March, the Guardian reported that a series of high-profile projects announced over the past years were "phantom investments", with the government failing to examine claims of job creation or audit multibillion-pound sums. Power is a particularly fraught issue in the UK, where it is more expensive than anywhere else in Europe. There is an eight- to 10-year queue for new developments to connect to the grid, a delay that hangs over houses and hospitals as well as datacentres. Britain is not the only place where political ambitions appear blind to the cost and difficulty of massive datacentre projects. Cecilia Rikap, an associate professor at University College London, said: "Governments around the world, including in the UK, are making political promises that ignore the realities of building infrastructure. "Instead of governing for their communities, they choose the AI narrative." An analyst for a UK engineering consultancy who has advised several AI growth zone projects said: "There doesn't seem to be appropriate scrutiny, public or otherwise, on these nationally significant projects. The figures and designs behind many schemes are at best indicative, and at worst complete bunk." From 'no plans' to Britain's largest onshore windfarm DataVita, the Lanarkshire complex's developer, says it will power the site in Airdrie with more than 1GW of renewable energy, including 400MW of solar power and 800MW of wind. This is more than one and half times the wind energy produced by Whitelee, the UK's largest onshore windfarm, which occupies an area half the size of Bristol. It is roughly the power needed to supply 800,000 Scottish homes. On its website, DataVita implies that all the energy sources are already in place, describing "energy parks" that are "directly connected" to its datacentres, delivering power that is equivalent to a small nuclear reactor. But there is no evidence that DataVita currently has 1GW of private-wire renewable energy powering its datacentres, or that it will have this in the near future. At present, the company has two much smaller operational datacentres, one in Glasgow and one in Chapelhall, the site of the Lanarkshire datacentre hub. Between them, they draw roughly 25MW from the grid. DataVita did not respond to an inquiry as to whether it had any currently installed renewables. There is also little evidence DataVita will have this energy in the near future, because it does not have the necessary land. Analysis by the Guardian, based on figures from the Edinburgh-based charity Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), and reviewed by an energy consultant who works on datacentres, suggests DataVita's stated plans for its renewable energy would need between 40 and 100 sq km of land. Its planning applications currently on file cover roughly 2 sq km in Lanarkshire, according to analysis by APRS reviewed by the Guardian. On its site, DataVita claims to have "over 1,000 acres" of renewables, or 4 sq km. The energy consultant who reviewed the figures said: "To go from 'nothing public' to 'country's largest operational onshore windfarm' in four years is pretty ambitious." Given that DataVita has no plans on file for such a development, he concluded that the 2030 deadline was unlikely to be met. HfD Group, DataVita's parent company, recently posted plans for an "energy park" in Lanarkshire. These plans do not appear to have entered the planning process yet, but envision "up to 19" wind turbines being built in Lanarkshire. This would still only provide about 5% of what DataVita claims it will generate. DataVita said the delivery of its energy commitments was "subject to final commercial agreements, planning, grid and consenting processes". Kat Jones, the director of APRS, said: "There is a wave of applications for hyperscale AI datacentres coming to Scotland and they all say they're going to use renewable energy. We have examined DataVita's plans to build renewables to power their 500MW datacentre and found them wanting. "Even if they could build the amount of energy infrastructure they say they will, it would cover 100 kilometres squared, but only provide for half their energy requirements on average." 'Power provision remains a key issue' This shortfall is not only DataVita's problem. As a "growth zone", Lanarkshire is a centrepiece of the UK's AI ambitions - one of five sites designated to receive broad government support in building out vast datacentre parks. On paper at least, AI growth zones need to meet a strict set of requirements, the most important being that they should have a realistic path to powering themselves. These requirements were set out in an application last summer that invited sites across the UK to apply to be AI growth zones. The government asked applicants to show they had an already allotted grid connection or an alternative "behind-the-meter" solution - that is, a way to generate energy independently without a grid connection. The Guardian established that the Lanarkshire site did not have the necessary grid connection, through an FoI inquiry to the UK's National Energy System Operator (Neso). DataVita's stated plans to generate its own electricity, meanwhile, do not appear to hold water. Documents obtained by the Guardian through an FoI suggest both the government and DataVita are aware of these issues but that the government chose to designate Lanarkshire as an AI growth zone anyway. In February, Scotland's first minister, John Swinney, addressed a letter to the managing director of DataVita, Danny Quinn, about Lanarkshire's designation as an AI growth zone. He said: "I recognise that power provision remains a key issue and we will continue to engage with the UK government and relevant partners to secure timely grid connections that enable and support the development to proceed at pace." In a meeting in March, DataVita and officials from Nature Scotland appeared to bank on an expedited grid connection for the project: "DV4 will be driven by Scottish Power connections timescales which we expect to be brought forward to 2027." Meanwhile, other internal communications show that shortly before the Lanarkshire project was announced, UK and Scottish officials appeared to entertain the idea that DataVita's site would simply burn gas to power itself. (DataVita said gas or any other fossil-fuel generation would not be used to power its datacentres.) The consultant said DataVita's own publications, and the fact they contain no indication of how it could realistically generate the energy it claims, called into question the seriousness of the government's policymaking around a central component of its growth plans. "It indicates that the AI growth zone designation is based more on optimistic and flashy promotional material than anything technically viable," he said. As for the government's apparent willingness to later help DataVita get a grid connection, he said: "It now appears that the government is willing to loosen their own criteria to meet the arbitrary political timescales they set themselves." In response to a query from the Guardian, DataVita said the Lanarkshire development's "energy strategy is based on new renewable generation, private-wire infrastructure, and intelligent connection to Scotland's electricity system, with delivery subject to final commercial agreements, planning, grid and consenting processes". A government spokesperson said: "The Lanarkshire AI growth zone is on track to be the biggest datacentre development in Scottish history. AI is critical to the UK's future prosperity and security - and to unlock its benefits, we need the infrastructure that underpins it. "The whole government is determined to create the right conditions for investment in the UK's AI and datacentre infrastructure - with Lanarkshire set to be the first AI growth zone in the country to see hardware rolled out."

OpenAI's apparent failure to visit key site raises questions over Stargate UK project

Exclusive: £20bn of 'potential' £30bn AI investment touted by UK ministers appears to have been hypothetical It was to be the biggest undertaking in Britain for OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Stargate UK - a multibillion-pound UK datacentre project - would represent "a major step forward in the US-UK technology partnership". But the plans were paused in April, with an OpenAI spokesperson citing concerns over regulation and high energy costs. Now the Guardian can reveal that OpenAI does not appear to have visited one of Stargate UK's key sites - and that £20bn of the "potential" £30bn in investment touted by the UK government appears to have been totally hypothetical. The findings raise questions about one of the most-hyped UK AI developments, and suggest a centrepiece of US-UK AI cooperation was in fact little more than a press release. It follows a Guardian investigation in March, which revealed many of the deals to "mainline AI into the veins" of the British economy were "phantom investments". Sources with knowledge of the process to set up Stargate UK suggested the government had approached the UK firm Nscale and OpenAI shortly before Donald Trump's visit to the UK last year, asking them to agree to develop the Stargate UK site in Cobalt Park, a business park in North Tyneside. "They needed a big announcement," said one. Stargate UK was announced last year amid a flurry of high-gloss US-UK tech deals that accompanied Trump's September visit to London. It echoed the Stargate AI project in the US, in which OpenAI promised to invest $500bn to "secure American leadership in AI". In comparison, Stargate UK's ambitions were modest. OpenAI was to work with Nscale, which is building a supercomputer in Essex, and Nvidia, a maker of AI chips, to develop infrastructure at sites across Britain. The most prominent of these sites was the planned datacentre at Cobalt Park, which the government designated as an "AI growth zone" during the US president's visit. A freedom of information (FoI) request returned to the Guardian shows that neither OpenAI nor Nscale ever met with the local authorities at the site in North Tyneside. Only Nvidia appears to have visited the North East combined authority, which oversaw the Stargate UK site. It did this in February 2026, five months after Trump's visit to the UK. "Nscale were pretty much told to back the Stargate project, and it caught them completely unaware," said a source. "It was never really a thing. It was effectively just a government PR stunt, and [the OpenAI chief executive] Sam Altman took the hit when the plug got pulled." Asked if OpenAI ever visited the site, an OpenAI spokesperson referred the Guardian to a previous statement the company made when it pulled out of Stargate UK. "We see huge potential for the UK's AI future ... We continue to explore Stargate UK and will move forward when the right conditions such as regulation and the cost of energy enable long-term infrastructure investment," it said. An Nscale spokesperson said its chief commercial officer had gone to North Tyneside, but did not clarify if they had met anyone there - and there is no record of them doing so. In its press release, the government said the AI growth zone that would house Stargate UK was "set to" bring in £30bn in investment. Of this, £10bn was "committed" by Blackstone, which is developing another datacentre in the area. (That datacentre, which is separate to OpenAI's project, appears to still be going ahead.) After that, there was "potential for an additional £20bn in investment from future partners". In response to a Guardian query asking how the figure of £20bn was calculated - and who these future partners could be - the government declined to give further detail, saying only that the number represented the totality of potential investment the site could attract. In response to the organisation Spotlight on Corruption, which asked the same question and shared the answer with the Guardian, the government said the figure of £20bn was given because that was the amount of money the site would need in order to build a datacentre and obtain the computing power necessary to utilise its electricity supply, which it said was 1.1GW. In other words, the government suggested the site would attract £20bn because it needed £20bn. "It is disingenuous for the government to imply that the £20bn for the AI growth zone will be forthcoming, when it reflects the amount needed," said Kamila Kingstone, a senior campaigner at Spotlight on Corruption. "It will give false hope to communities that eye-watering amounts of money are on the way to boost the local economy when the reality might be very different." John Johnsson, the leader of the Conservatives in North Tyneside, said Stargate UK came as a surprise to local authorities. "When it was announced, we were really, really taken aback. We were surprised because we weren't made aware of any of these discussions. All of a sudden, there's all of this pizazz and these great big things announced," he said. The lack of meetings - or prior coordination - is unusual for a project that Altman described as reflecting OpenAI's "shared vision" for the UK's investment in AI infrastructure, and the Nvidia chief executive, Jensen Huang, said was "a historic chapter in US-United Kingdom technology collaboration". Other doubts hang over Stargate UK. An FoI request returned to the Guardian from the UK's National Energy System Operator suggests the site did not have a grid connection. Instead, it submitted an alternative solution to power itself, which was redacted in the application returned to the Guardian. "There's just not the infrastructure there to be able to actually support it," said Johnsson. "It's now looking highly unlikely whether the project is going to come to North Tyneside." He added: "The fundamentals, energy costs, grid capacity and infrastructure do not appear to have been in place to support a project of this scale. "It's really disappointing. It did have a feeling of: this is too good to be true and then we started to sense quite quickly that perhaps things weren't as further down the line as anticipated." A spokesperson for the government said: "The government is determined to create the right conditions for investment in the UK's AI and datacentre infrastructure, and on the delivery of our AI growth zones, with work now well under way in the north-east. "A dedicated taskforce co-chaired by the technology secretary and [the North East mayor] Kim McGuinness is driving forward planning, investment and skills for the region. The North East AI growth zone will increase its energy capacity to 1.1GW once fully operational, with over 400MW of this capacity to come online in 2028."