The UK government has announced that it has attracted $8.2 billion worth of investment in UK data infrastructure from four US tech firms. The news was reported by Technology Secretary Peter Kyle on Monday during the government’s International Investment Summit. The companies investing are CyrusOne, ServiceNow, Cloud HQ, and CoreWeave.
The new Labour government, which took over just a few months ago, is keen to show the public that it can balance workers’ rights and not scare off businesses. It revealed today that the latest round of investments takes the total investment in UK data centers to over $32.5 billion since it took office.
The government said that this investment will help the country host the necessary computing power and data storage for companies to train and deploy the next generation of AI. It’s also expected to help the public because AI will be able to be rolled out quicker in areas like healthcare.
Commenting on the investments the Labour government has been attracting, 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 centers and AI development.
Data centers 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 centers as Critical National Infrastructure giving the industry the ultimate reassurance the UK will always be a safe home for their investment.”
The investments from CyrusOne, ServiceNow, Cloud HQ, and CoreWeave follow major deals struck with Blackstone and Amazon Web Services which have committed a combined $23.4 billion in data center infrastructure.
By making UK data centers Critical National Infrastructure, the government says that it can better support the sector in recovering from and anticipating incidents. It hopes this will keep the industry secure and stable and attract investment.
This week’s International Investment Summit will see business leaders come to the UK to see how the country can benefit from emerging growth sectors. Attending the event are Ruth Porat, President and CIO at Alphabet and Google; David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly; Alex Kendall, CEO of Wayve; Pushmeet Kohli Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind; Eric Schmidt, former CEO and chairman of Google; and Dame Emma Walmsley, CEO of GSK.
Source: GOV UK
