Tag: AI infrastructure
133 articles tagged AI infrastructure
Growth minister says UK will keep building data centres after US vote
Dan Tomlinson tells the FT the UK will not slow its AI build-out after the US midterm backlash, calling investment 'too low' and citing the data centre pact.
OECD names UK £2bn Compute Roadmap as AI compute becomes strategic
The OECD's 2026 digital outlook says compute now shapes who can build advanced AI, and warns big investment figures often reflect pledges, not built capacity.
National Grid buys Teesside land for substation near data centre
National Grid is buying 70-plus acres at Teesworks for a substation tipped as the UK's largest, beside a data centre site, Sky News reported on 1 November.
Ministers weigh data centre covenant in return for faster grid access
A proposed covenant would ask data centre developers for local investment or energy-use standards in return for quicker planning decisions and grid connections.
UKAI warns Chancellor the UK risks becoming an AI 'vassal state'
Trade body UKAI, representing 270+ AI firms, wants the Budget to fund a single sovereign AI strategy and open government contracts to British AI companies.
Science council warns UK risks being just a 'high-value AI customer'
The Council for Science and Technology has urged the AI minister to draw up a UK AI Sovereignty Plan, name one owner for it and fund trials of domestic models.
Nvidia pledges £189m of UK compute for agentic AI safety research
Nvidia commits £189 million ($250 million) of UK-hosted compute over five years to agentic AI safety research, with Oxford, UCL and Imperial named recipients.
Plans lodged for a record 1,000MW data centre campus at Chapelcross
CX Tech wants eight data centres beside the old Chapelcross nuclear site in Dumfries and Galloway, weeks after Holyrood paused decisions on hyperscale schemes.
Apatura claims almost 2,100 on-site jobs at five Scottish data centres
The developer has published per-site staffing and community benefit figures, days after MSPs paused decisions and as campaigners dispute government job counts.
Pentagon in talks to lend $5bn to London-founded Fluidstack
The loan would fund data centre component supply chains, not a new site. It shows how far a British-born compute firm has moved into US industrial policy.
Hundreds at Holyrood demand a halt to Scotland's data centres
At least 20 projects are in the Scottish planning pipeline, including one billed as the world's second largest. Campaigners want a pause; Swinney has declined one.
The case that AI will need far fewer data centre GPUs
As workloads shift from training to inference, smaller models and purpose-built silicon are loosening the hyperscale GPU cluster's grip on enterprise AI.
AI data centres move 175km from cities as grid capacity runs out
JLL data shows European hyperscale projects due by 2028 sit nearly four times further from major hubs than those delivered since 2022, chasing power and land.
Modal Labs opens London office as US AI firms expand
The $4.65bn AI infrastructure company is taking space near Marble Arch, joining OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor and Cohere in the capital.
Ofgem wants £350m deposits to clear the datacentre grid queue
Ofgem has opened a consultation on charging datacentre developers large refundable deposits for grid connections, with 315 projects now queueing for 73GW.
Microsoft frames £23bn UK investment as AI infrastructure bet
Microsoft UK CEO Darren Hardman positions £23 billion datacentre and skilling spend as the foundation of a British 'intelligence economy', ahead of London Tech Week.
UK data centres hit 5.8% of national power as Europe's AI energy gap widens
Europe's high electricity prices threaten its AI ambitions, with the UK at 5.8% of national power for data centres and OpenAI pausing its Stargate UK project last month.
Argyll launches UK sovereign AI inference cloud with SambaNova
Argyll Data Development has launched a UK sovereign AI inference cloud built with SambaNova for defence, healthcare and finance customers needing UK jurisdiction.
Anthropic commits $200bn to Google Cloud and TPU chip capacity
Anthropic has committed to spend $200bn (£148bn) with Google Cloud over five years, accounting for over 40% of Google's disclosed cloud revenue backlog.
UK departments at odds on AI datacentre energy demand
DSIT and DESNZ projections for AI datacentre power use diverge by an order of magnitude as the UK's compute and net-zero plans collide.
UK 'powered land' valuations surge as AI data-centre queue balloons
Britain's AI data-centre gold rush has pushed land prices to £15m/acre on power-ready sites, with 119 projects in planning and 50 GW of grid requests queued.
Meta expands Broadcom partnership to co-develop multi-gigawatt custom AI silicon
Meta and Broadcom commit to four new generations of MTIA chips and a 1GW-plus deployment, with CEO Hock Tan moving from the Meta board to advisory role.
OpenAI to open first permanent London office in 2027 amid UK data-centre pause
OpenAI secures King's Cross space for 544 staff as its largest research hub outside the US, days after pausing its UK data-centre project over regulation.
Nvidia's Jensen Huang bets big on token economics as AI's new currency
Nvidia's CEO outlined a vision where tokens become the fundamental unit of AI value, but significant gaps remain between production costs and real-world revenue.
UK AI firm Nscale raises £1.6 billion in Nvidia-backed funding round
British AI infrastructure company Nscale valued at £11.7 billion after $2 billion Series C round led by Norway's Aker and 8090 Industries.
UK Data Centre Cuts AI Power Draw by 40% on Demand in National Grid Trial
A five-day trial near London demonstrated that GPU clusters can dynamically reduce power consumption by up to 40% in response to grid events without disrupting workloads.
Droplet Biosciences Partners With Nvidia to Speed Up Cancer Diagnostics
Diagnostics startup Droplet Biosciences is using Nvidia's GPU-accelerated AI infrastructure to cut post-surgery cancer test turnaround from weeks to hours.
UK Protesters to March Against AI Data Centre Expansion
Campaigners are staging protests in London this weekend to demand stronger protections against the environmental impact of the UK's growing data centre infrastructure.
AI memory chip famine pushes up smartphone and PC prices
The race to build AI data centres has created an acute shortage of DRAM and NAND memory chips, driving up costs for phones, PCs and consoles — with no relief expected before 2027.
Red Hat Selected to Build AI and Cloud Backbone for UK Ministry of Defence
The UK MOD has chosen Red Hat to architect a unified AI and hybrid cloud platform spanning data centres to the tactical edge across all service branches.
UK Government Admits AI Datacentre Approval Was Flawed
Ministers concede planning permission for major M25 datacentre should be quashed after failing to properly assess environmental impact.
BP Abandons UK Hydrogen Project as Data Centre Plans Take Priority
Oil giant BP has withdrawn its Teesside hydrogen plant application after the site was chosen for Europe's largest AI data centre, exposing tensions in government priorities.
Operational Readiness Critical as 40% of AI Projects Face Cancellation
Technology leaders must treat AI as enterprise application requiring unified platform spanning compute, data, and governance to avoid Gartner's predicted agentic AI failure rate by 2027.
UK Announces AI Growth Zones Targeting £100 Billion Investment and Thousands of Jobs
UK Government confirms North Wales as latest AI Growth Zone site, introducing planning and energy reforms to accelerate development and unlock major investment in AI infrastructure.
