This kind of science/tech investment is and has been catnip for UK government, regardless of political party, for years. They're out of ideas to stimulate growth, and AI is their hail Mary. No one involved seems to be able to explain why it will work.
Ok let’s assume that AI will be a game changer. How does hosting it in the UK change anything? Just feels like something to brag about, but doesn’t have any impact.
The UK is suffering from persistently expensive electricity (https://grid.iamkate.com/, see All-Time). How does hosting AI data centres help with that?
In Norway I've noticed that stringent requirements for privacy make it much easier to run things in the cloud if the physical location of said cloud is actually in Norway.
So if OpenAI is hosting their services within the borders of the UK, then they would also be beholden to UK law. Makes it easier for the financial sector, government and healthcare to use their AI models than if they would have to send their data to a datacenter in the US.
Well, they're aiming to do the power via SMR reactors, and they have a large government supported company (Rolls) making those. I think there's a bit of a hail mary that that will be a successful export story.
I don't know much about this but do these prices reflect electricity costs for a datacenter? Maybe the infra is different than for general public use.. maybe the last mile problems don't exist for data centers.
From what I gather the UKians have a real chip on their shoulders from being left out of every tech revolution of the recent decades (chips, EVs and assorted green energy tech, rockets and now AI)
The UK didn't exactly get left out, it just failed to invest in growth and productisation. Some great research comes out of there and then moves overseas or gets bought up (like ARM).
If there are any chips on shoulders, it's more to do with the government talking itself up, throwing around some feel-good bullshit, usually entirely mis-targeted (see for example Sunak talking about making a safe space for blockchain companies) and then failing to get out of the way when the country actually does produce something amazing.
Not bad for a small country that's never been involved in a space race and which stopped trying to be a global Great Power before the space age even started.
I'm from Britain and can't think of anyone I know who has a chip on their shoulder about technology, largely because most of us either went to work for successful American firms the moment we graduated, or in the case of my brother, made a successful tech startup, grew it to be a profitable business and then sold it for a large sum of money (to the Americans again). Many of us have managed to achieve great life success by taking part in the tech industry, and were rewarded with small ownership stakes in those firms as a result. The fact that we didn't found those companies is a pity and a genuine source of relative weakness, but the reality is that the internet makes for global markets in which for any given product category there can only be a few winners. People can't really handle more than about four or five brands vying for attention simultaneously, which means it's just not mentally possible for every country to have a successful tech company in every category. The places that managed to grow competitors to the big US success stories all relied on either language barriers or government interference.
As for the rest, note that the USA is holding onto chip manufacture by its fingernails right now, an obsession with green tech is exactly the reason there aren't many AI datacenters in the UK to begin with, and Britain birthed one of the world's top AI labs. Yes, owned by Google because only great powers can invest the sums required, but that's OK. The collaboration between Britain and America on AI has been superb nonetheless.
Don't get me wrong. The UK is in a terrible state right now, the result of decades of leftward drift after the 1980s that consistently prioritized everything except economic success. Just turning around the Titanic would take years even if the process were to start tomorrow, which it won't, and the cultural gap is real. But there are still some strong foundations there. A whole generation of Brits have learned what great companies look like by working for the Americans. That's not reflected in their politics yet because politics is in both countries dominated by the old, and currently revolves around the issue of mass immigration. Economic success is on the backburner for now. But it'll come back. And when it does, there will be people who are ready to lead.
Why not have this located in northern Scotland taking advantage of the surplus wind power being wasted due to north-south grid capacity, instead it’s likely going to be powered by gas generators.
In general the UK government talks growth but so far has delivered anti growth.
Tech outsourcing seems to have really picked up since the NI changes.
Isn't there a half-decent changes Scotland votes for independence from the UK in the foreseeable future? Seems like that is in opposition to the goal of data and compute soverignty.
To add to the other replies, the SNP have been the biggest political driver of the independence efforts and they seem to be falling out of favour at the moment.
It made me laugh when Nicola Sturgeon, who was the leader of the SNP for a long old time and who has been at the forefront of the Scottish Independence movement for many years, one of its most recognisable voices, recently announced she might retire to London because Scotland was now feeling a little bit suffocating.
So I think the idea of Scotland splitting from the UK is on the back burner for the forseeable future. It had a real moment in 2014 but didn't make it over the line. I don't think the UK government will be allowing another vote any time soon.
It sounds like this will include Teesworks, one of the dodgiest land deals of recent years. For a small investment two people essentially held the entire thing to ransom and secured options on an astonishing amount government money.
OpenAI seem very non-commital about the whole thing. They will "explore offtake", which effectively means they'll think about it. This lack of commitment in a world where we seemingly can't build new data centers fast enough is a bit worrying. They clearly anticipate scenarios in which they won't want this capacity either because of poor pricing or lack of demand.
They seem to be betting on multiple things happening at once - as indicated by recent projections by their CFO, following Oracle's own insane projections. They are betting on demand rising exponentially and somehow keeping up with it using a consistent monetization model - which is not there yet.
I am not a finance person, but I wish more people with qualifications - and hopefully unaffiliated with any party - scrutinized all those claims and projections.
Only 8,000 GPUs to start and potentially 31,000 over time.
This is very small compared to Stargate Norway (announced almost 2 months ago), which starts out with 100,000 GPUs and planned (!) to have 250,000.
Yes. But interesting that Stargate Norway is so much more significant. Not that it should be directly connected, but UK has more than 10x the population of Norway. So given a very simplified glance at the situation, Norway seems to have a strong position for the coming years in AI.
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The UK is suffering from persistently expensive electricity (https://grid.iamkate.com/, see All-Time). How does hosting AI data centres help with that?
So if OpenAI is hosting their services within the borders of the UK, then they would also be beholden to UK law. Makes it easier for the financial sector, government and healthcare to use their AI models than if they would have to send their data to a datacenter in the US.
It’s all irrelevant to the fundamental economic problems the country is facing, which do not have an easy solution.
Going someway towards that would boost almost all sectors of the economy.
You've gotta help us doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out ideas
Chips like those designed by Arm that can be found in almost everything these days?
AI like DeepMind?
Deleted Comment
If there are any chips on shoulders, it's more to do with the government talking itself up, throwing around some feel-good bullshit, usually entirely mis-targeted (see for example Sunak talking about making a safe space for blockchain companies) and then failing to get out of the way when the country actually does produce something amazing.
1. USA
2. Russia
3. China
4. Britain
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-number-of-obje...
Not bad for a small country that's never been involved in a space race and which stopped trying to be a global Great Power before the space age even started.
I'm from Britain and can't think of anyone I know who has a chip on their shoulder about technology, largely because most of us either went to work for successful American firms the moment we graduated, or in the case of my brother, made a successful tech startup, grew it to be a profitable business and then sold it for a large sum of money (to the Americans again). Many of us have managed to achieve great life success by taking part in the tech industry, and were rewarded with small ownership stakes in those firms as a result. The fact that we didn't found those companies is a pity and a genuine source of relative weakness, but the reality is that the internet makes for global markets in which for any given product category there can only be a few winners. People can't really handle more than about four or five brands vying for attention simultaneously, which means it's just not mentally possible for every country to have a successful tech company in every category. The places that managed to grow competitors to the big US success stories all relied on either language barriers or government interference.
As for the rest, note that the USA is holding onto chip manufacture by its fingernails right now, an obsession with green tech is exactly the reason there aren't many AI datacenters in the UK to begin with, and Britain birthed one of the world's top AI labs. Yes, owned by Google because only great powers can invest the sums required, but that's OK. The collaboration between Britain and America on AI has been superb nonetheless.
Don't get me wrong. The UK is in a terrible state right now, the result of decades of leftward drift after the 1980s that consistently prioritized everything except economic success. Just turning around the Titanic would take years even if the process were to start tomorrow, which it won't, and the cultural gap is real. But there are still some strong foundations there. A whole generation of Brits have learned what great companies look like by working for the Americans. That's not reflected in their politics yet because politics is in both countries dominated by the old, and currently revolves around the issue of mass immigration. Economic success is on the backburner for now. But it'll come back. And when it does, there will be people who are ready to lead.
In general the UK government talks growth but so far has delivered anti growth. Tech outsourcing seems to have really picked up since the NI changes.
It made me laugh when Nicola Sturgeon, who was the leader of the SNP for a long old time and who has been at the forefront of the Scottish Independence movement for many years, one of its most recognisable voices, recently announced she might retire to London because Scotland was now feeling a little bit suffocating.
So I think the idea of Scotland splitting from the UK is on the back burner for the forseeable future. It had a real moment in 2014 but didn't make it over the line. I don't think the UK government will be allowing another vote any time soon.
See: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/06/25/scottish-ind...
Dead Comment
You can hear Richard Brooks summarise the situation (in 2023) here: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/podcast/76
Then they announce one for middle east, and perhaps the assumption is $ being thrown at them but surely they dont need that much capacity.
Now the UK? Confirming superintelligence.