The Government has today welcomed the “vote of confidence” in Britain made by US firms CyrusOne, ServiceNow, Cloud HQ and CoreWeave, who have announced the UK will be the home for their data infrastructure worth a total of £6.3bn.
The investments, announced as part of the International Investment Summit, will take the total investment in UK data centres to over £25bn since this Government took office, in a move which it claims demonstrates its continuous effort in driving growth by partnering with business.
The new data centres will provide the UK with more computing power and data storage, so that Britain has the necessary infrastructure to train and deploy the next generation of AI technologies, such as complex machine learning models and algorithms. This in turn will help the UK roll out AI faster in areas like healthcare.
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said: “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.
“Data centres 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 data centres as Critical National Infrastructure giving the industry the ultimate reassurance the UK will always be a safe home for their investment. Today’s drumbeat of investment is a vote of confidence in Britain and our approach to work with business to deliver sustained growth for all.”
As part of the investment, Washington DC-headquartered firm CloudHQ is set to develop a new £1.9bn data centre campus in Didcot, Oxfordshire, while global AI platform and software firm ServiceNow plans to invest £1.15bn into its UK business over the next 5 years.
In addition, US-based global data centre developer CyrusOne plans to expand its investment into the UK to £2.5bn over the coming years, and, building on its £1bn investment announced in May and the opening of its European headquarters in London, CoreWeave will be investing a further £750m in the UK to support the demand for critical AI infrastructure.
Today’s investments follow major deals with investment giant Blackstone, who committed to a £10bn investment in the North East of England last month, and Amazon Web Services, who announced they plan to invest £8bn in building, maintaining and operating data centres in the UK over the next 5 years.
This week’s International Investment Summit will see ministers and business leaders discuss how the UK can capitalise on emerging growth sectors, including health tech and AI, clean energy and creative industries with confirmed speakers including Alphabet and Google president and chief investment officer Ruth Porat and Google DeepMind principal scientist Pushmeet Kohli.
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