• Nvidia and partners will deploy 120,000 Blackwell / Grace Blackwell GPUs in the UK by end-2026, as part of an £11 billion “build-out” covering chips, land, power and data centre infrastructure.
• The investment is woven into a broader UK-US “Tech Prosperity Deal”, also involving Microsoft and CoreWeave, and includes sovereign AI infrastructure (e.g. Stargate UK), with implications for data power, economic growth and energy supply.
What happened：Nvidia UK AI investment and data centres rollout
Nvidia has announced plans to invest up to £11 billion into the UK’s artificial intelligence infrastructure, to help build what the company describes as the backbone of a future where Britain can compete more directly in the AI sector. Under the terms, Nvidia partners — including UK-based Nscale, Microsoft, and CoreWeave — will deploy 120,000 advanced Blackwell GPUs across UK data centres by the end of 2026. Of these, 60,000 will be placed by Nscale in the UK as part of a global deployment of 300,000 GPUs.
These investments will cover not just the chips themselves but also the associated land, power, cooling and structures required to build “AI factories”. Nvidia says it is working also on projects like Stargate UK, and is supporting quantum-AI research, skills training, and collaborations to ensure British research and businesses can exploit what it calls sovereign capabilities.
Also Read: ‘EU AI Act’ takes effect in August: A landmark regulation for AI
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Why it’s important
One of the UK’s weaknesses in the AI era has been a lack of domestic compute infrastructure. While the UK has strong academic AI research and thriving startups, much of the actual computational power (GPUs & data centres) has depended on overseas suppliers. This investment helps reduce reliance on external infrastructure, bringing hardware, data and model hosting closer to home. In addition to facilitating opportunities for local companies and investigators to use AI in industries including medicine, finance, and climate science, the development of AI factories and data warehouses additionally creates jobs in both construction and operation. AI and quantum computing-related skills programs are likely to continue to help narrow the skills gap in the technology industry. Large-scale AI infrastructure raises questions about sustainability, cost, and environmental impact in addition to consuming enormous amounts of electricity. In addition to cooling, regulatory planning, and zoning, the UK will need to address energy supply (possibly nuclear, renewables, and gas or other backup). To avoid bottlenecks, these issues must to be handled carefully.
