New £14bn data centers will help transform the UK into an AI superpower

As part of the British government’s new plan for the development of AI projects, data center initiatives have been announced totaling £14 billion ($16.96 billion). Thus, Vantage, Nscale and Kyndryl pledged to invest in local digital infrastructure and create 13 thousand jobs. The plan also includes the construction of a new AI supercomputer, Datacenter Dynamics reports. Even before the announcement of the new government program, investments in British data centers were reported by Blackstone (£10 billion) and DC01UK (£3.75 billion), as well as Cloud HQ, CyrusOne, CoreWeave and ServiceNow (total £6.3 billion)

As part of the AI ​​Opportunities Action Plan, some details of which emerged in November, AI Growth Zones will be created across the country with priority access to technology and energy, designed to attract investment from around the world. The zones will also become a testing ground for energy projects related to data centers. A special role is assigned to nuclear energy. The first zone will be built in Culham (Oxfordshire), where the UK Atomic Energy Authority is located and the AWS and CloudHQ campuses are located.

Operator NScale has announced its intention to invest £2.5 billion ($3 billion) in the UK, where it will build its first AI data center in Essex with a capacity of 50 MW, expandable to 90 MW. The company hopes to put the data center into operation in the fourth quarter of 2026, placing up to 45 thousand NVIDIA GB200 in it and hiring 250 permanent employees. In other counties, NScale will begin building modular data centers in the second half of 2025, and will subsequently develop fixed data centers.

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Vantage Data Centers will build a 10-building campus on the site of a former Ford car plant in Wales. We are talking about investments of £12 billion ($14.55 billion) and the creation of 11.5 thousand jobs. Back in 2020, Vantage acquired Next Generation Data, which operates data centers in Wales and London. Finally, Kyndryl will create 1,000 AI-related jobs at a new technology center in Liverpool, which will be built over the next three years.

Authorities previously classified data centers as critical infrastructure (CNI) and promised to reform planning laws to make it easier to build new facilities. Moreover, applications that were rejected are reconsidered. For example, in December, a project in Buckinghamshire that was canceled a year earlier was given the green light.

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According to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the AI ​​industry needs a government that will take its side and not allow development opportunities to be missed. According to the minister, the plan will make the UK a world leader in the field of AI, giving the industry support and impetus. Thanks to this, there will be more jobs, more money for the population and, finally, the system of public services will be reformed. More details about the plan are described on the website of the British government itself.

The UK also plans to build an AI supercomputer. There is little information about it yet, but the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said its creation is part of a plan to increase the country’s computing power twenty-fold by 2030. It is noteworthy that last year the authorities delayed the implementation of £1.3 billion of HPC projects, citing a lack of funds. In particular, the creation of the country’s first exascale supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh was cancelled.