US Tech Giants Invest £6.3 Billion in UK Data Centers, Boosting AI Infrastructure

UK data centers set to recieve £6.3 billion investment from US tech

The UK has received billions in data center investment in recent weeks Britain's Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has confirmed that four major US tech companies have pledged to invest £6.3 billion ($8.2 billion) in UK data centers. Describing it in a press release as a "vote of confidence," Kyle says the decision for CyrusOne, ServiceNow, Cloud HQ and CoreWeave to plough billions into the UK's AI efforts will help the nation become the leader in digital innovation and AI that it hopes for. Announced at the International Investment Summit, the multibillion-dollar sum brings the total investment in UK data centers under the current government to more than £25 billion. The investments will help fund new data centers that will provide the compute and storage for Britain to "train and deploy the next generation of AI technologies." Kyle commented: "Tech leaders from all over the world are seeing Britain as the best place to invest with a thriving and stable market for data centres and AI development." Washington DC-headquartered CloudHQ's plans include a £1.9 billion data center in Didcot, Oxfordshire. Set to bring 1,500 jobs during construction and 100 permanent roles when operational, it will help meet the UK's growing demand for AI and ML. ServiceNow has committed to investing £1.15 billion over five years to expand its data centres with Nvidia GPUs and support new office space as the growing company. CyrusOne's cash injection will total £2.5 billion, with CoreWeave adding an extra £750 million on top of previous investments by Blackstone (£10 billion) and AWS (£8 billion). The news comes just weeks after Kyle classified data centers as 'Critical National Infrastructure', indicative of the extra support they would receive from the government in the event of critical incidents. The investment also follows US private equity firm Blackstone's £10 billion ($13 billion) investment to build AI data centers in the North East of England.

US firms to invest £6.3bn in UK data centre infrastructure

These latest commitments take the total investment in UK data centres to £25bn since July. US firms CyrusOne, ServiceNow, Cloud HQ and CoreWeave have announced investments to a total of £6.3bn for data centre infrastructure in the UK. The announcement was made yesterday (14 October) at the UK's International Investment Summit and takes the total investment in UK data centres to more than £25bn since the Labour party took charge this July. "Tech leaders from all over the world are seeing Britain as the best place to invest with a thriving and stable market for data centres and AI development," said UK technology secretary Peter Kyle. Washington DC-based data centre provider CloudHQ is developing a new £1.9bn data centre campus in Didcot, Oxfordshire, which is estimated to create 100 full-time jobs once operational. ServiceNow, a cloud computing platform developer, plans to invest £1.15bn into its UK business over the next five years. The investment will go towards expanding the company's data centresUS,with Nvidia GPUs for local processing data and support AI development in the country. CyrusOne, a global data centre developer, will be expanding its investment into the UK to a total of £2.5bn over the coming years and AI hyperscaler CoreWeave, which recently opened its European headquarters in London, announced an investment of £750m to support AI cloud infrastructure, building on a £1bn investment announced in May. "Data centres power our day-to-day lives and boost innovation in growing sectors like AI," said Kyle. The UK government designated data centres as "critical infrastructure" last month, giving them the same importance as vital services such as water and energy while inviting major investments into its data centre infrastructure. Eric Schwartz, the president and CEO of CyrusOne, said this critical designation for data centres was "a strong signal that data centres are of strategic importance to the UK economy". Also last month, Amazon Web Services announced an £8bn investment into the UK's digital infrastructure over the next five years, while privatecompany DC01UK announced a £3.75bn investment for a data centre in Hertfordshire. While the growth of data centres is welcomed by some, their massive energy use has led to debates about how to balance growth with security of supply and climate emissions targets. In the UK, energy consumed by data centres has risen by 400pc since 2015, and studies suggest that the global AI industry, a part of what's causing a data centre boom, could be independently consuming as much energy as the Netherlands by 2027. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

U.S. Tech Firms to Invest More Than $8 Billion in U.K. Data Centers Amid AI Frenzy

The U.K. government said it had secured a combined investment of 6.3 billion pounds ($8.23 billion) in data centers from four American tech companies, the latest commitment from U.S. businesses to expand overseas amid booming demand for artificial intelligence. Britain's Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said the investment pledges came from KKR & Co.-backed data-center operator CyrusOne, cloud-software company ServiceNow, Washington D.C.-headquartered data-center company CloudHQ and cloud-computing provider CoreWeave. British officials said CyrusOne plans to spend 2.5 billion pounds on U.K. projects that should be operational by the fourth quarter of 2028, subject to planning permission. ServiceNow pledged 1.15 billion pounds over the next five years to expand its London and Newport data centers as well as office space. Meanwhile, CloudHQ is set to develop a new 1.9 billion-pound data-center campus in Didcot, Oxfordshire for which the company already secured planning permission, the U.K. government said, while CoreWeave will invest 750 million pounds in AI cloud infrastructure. The commitments underscore growing appetite among U.S. businesses to expand their presence and services overseas in an effort to gain an edge over rivals in the AI race. OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in late 2022 ushered in a wave of spending from companies seeking to satisfy demand for increasingly powerful data centers and cloud services. News Corp, owner of Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI. U.K. Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said the investment pledges came after the government designated data centres as critical infrastructure for the British economy. "Data centres power our day-to-day lives and boost innovation in growing sectors like AI," he said in a statement. Blackstone last month committed 10 billion pounds for an AI data center in the North East of England, while Amazon Web Services, Amazon.com's cloud-computing arm, said it would invest 8 billion pounds over the next five years into its own data infrastructure. U.S. tech giants are also expanding in continental Europe: Microsoft earlier this month pledged about $4.75 billion over the next two years in cloud and AI infrastructure in Italy. Amazon said in June that it was planning to invest 17.8 billion euros ($19.47 billion) through 2040 to expand its logistics network and cloud infrastructure in Germany. The company also laid out plans to invest 15.7 billion euros over the next decade to expand its cloud services in Spain.

Britain opens floodgates to US datacenter investment

Just weeks after the British government designated datacenters as critical national infrastructure (CNI), a quartet of US tech firms have committed to the UK as the place to invest in their data facilities. Timed to coincide with the government's International Investment Summit in London this week aimed at attracting overseas businesses to bring their money to Britain, the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) claimed the move takes the total investment in UK bit barns to over £25 billion ($32.5 billion) since the administration took office. The four American companies involved are datacenter operators CyrusOne and CloudHQ, business workflow software company ServiceNow, and CoreWeave, a provider of cloud-hosted GPUs. The quartet's investment will provide the UK with more compute power and data storage, DSIT said, so that Britain has the necessary infrastructure to train and deploy the next generation of AI technologies. CoreWeave had already announced a £1 billion ($1.3 billion) investment into the rain-soaked British Isles back in May to set up its European headquarters here and build a pair of AI data shacks. According to DSIT, the company is stumping up an additional £750 million ($896 million) to "support the next generation of AI cloud infrastructure," but it isn't clear if this means additional datacenters or not. Likewise, CloudHQ had already secured planning permission to build its £1.9 billion ($2.5 billion) campus in Didcot, Oxfordshire. The company claims it will help meet the country's growing demand for AI and machine learning, and that it will create 1,500 jobs during construction and 100 permanent jobs once fully operational. That leaves ServiceNow, which says it plans to invest £1.15 billion ($1.5 billion) into its UK business over the next five years. This will go toward expanding its infrastructure with Nvidia GPUs and adding new office space as the company grows beyond its current headcount of 1,000 employees, it claims. Finally, CyrusOne already has five datacenters located around London, but wants to expand its investment into the UK to £2.5 billion ($2.9 billion) over the coming years. The company says that its new projects are expected to create over 1,000 jobs and should be operational by Q4 2028, "subject to planning permission." Of course, "subject to planning permission" doesn't have the same connotations it once had as datacenters are now designated as CNI, meaning that developers will largely be able to override any local objections to such facilities being built in a particular area, as The Register revealed last month. "Tech leaders from all over the world are seeing Britain as the best place to invest with a thriving and stable market for datacenters and AI development," Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said in a statement. "Datacenters power our day-to-day lives and boost innovation in growing sectors like AI. This is why only last month, I took steps to class UK datacenters as Critical National Infrastructure, giving the industry the ultimate reassurance the UK will always be a safe home for their investment." At the event, Prime Minister Keir Starmer also took part in a debate with former Google chief Eric Schmidt. According to The Guardian, Schmidt urged Starmer to expand high-skilled immigration to help with AI, pointing out that a lot of "incredibly smart people" are now getting graduate degrees in AI, and the key is to either keep them in Britain or get them to move here from Europe. We're sure that went down really well with Starmer, who has repeatedly said that Britain is not going back to the freedom of movement with the rest of Europe that existed before Brexit, and also that his government will cut immigration. Meanwhile, Schmidt has been giving various venues the benefit of his wisdom on AI. Last week he told an AI summit in Washington DC that the world should just build as many AI datacenters as are needed because we aren't going to hit climate goals anyway. ®