Data centre investment by US companies announced today (14 October) at the UK’s International Investment Summit will enable the UK to roll out AI technologies in areas such as healthcare and green tech.
US data centre companies CyrusOne, ServiceNow, Cloud HQ and CoreWeave, all announced data centre infrastructure investments worth a total of £6.3bn, according to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Data centre investment is being driven by the requirement for increased computing power and data storage for the development of AI.
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said: “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.”
Washington DC-headquartered company CloudHQ will develop a new £1.9bn data centre campus in Didcot, Oxfordshire.
The hyper-scale data centre is currently in development and will help meet the UK’s growing demand for AI and machine learning. It will create 1,500 jobs during construction, and 100 permanent jobs once fully operational.
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Hossein Fateh, CloudHQ’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said: “We are very excited to deliver a hyper-scale campus in the UK that is truly an extension of Slough due to our private diverse fibre optic route.
Our site enables us to build out our campus environment to provide scale and density to meet our customers’ requirements.”
Global AI platform and software leader ServiceNow also confirmed its commitment to the UK market, with plans to invest £1.15bn into its UK business over the next five years.
The investment will expand its data centres with Nvidia GPUs for local processing data, and support new office space as the company significantly grows its employee base beyond its current headcount of 1,000 employees.
ServiceNow Chairman and CEO Bill McDermott said: “AI-powered transformation is a generational opportunity to champion citizens, empower employees, and delight customers. ServiceNow’s investment will accelerate the UK’s innovation blueprint, redefining how people live and work.”
US data centre developer CyrusOne announced plans to expand its investment into the UK to £2.5bn over the coming years.
Subject to planning permission, the projects should be operational by Q4 2028 and are expected to create over 1,000 jobs both directly and within its immediate design and construction value chain.
Eric Schwartz, President and Chief Executive Officer at CyrusOne, said: “The UK government’s recent ‘critical national infrastructure’ (CNI) designation was a strong signal that data centres are of strategic importance to the UK economy.
It has provided CyrusOne with the confidence to continue its expansion in the UK and support the government’s policy ambition to become a centre of excellence for digital services, technology innovation and AI.
Announcing its second investment in the UK this year, AI hyperscaler CoreWeave also confirmed £750m to support the next generation of AI cloud infrastructure.
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. The investment in the UK is CoreWeave’s second largest investment in a country following the US.
In September, the UK government classed UK data centres as ‘Critical National Infrastructure’ (CNI), giving the sector can greater government support in recovering from and anticipating critical incidents, ensuring the industry remains secure and stable.
