UK government signs US partnership to deliver Europe’s largest AI factory
Some 120,000 GPUs are set to be deployed in the UK over the next 12 months, as the government says it’s laser-focused on attracting talent and startups
To tie in with US president Donald Trump’s state visit, the UK and US have agreed to the Tech Prosperity Deal, to boost the development and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), quantum and nuclear technologies.
Building on the £44bn UK government investment in the AI and tech sector and a commitment to invest a total of £31bn from Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI and CoreWeave, Labour is aiming to make the UK Europe’s largest gigafactory.
As part of the pact, the UK and US will unite to forge joint research schemes to further the use of AI to allow for targeted treatments and other shared priorities, such as fusion energy. This could see both countries working together to build AI models for life-changing breakthroughs such as targeted treatments for those suffering with cancer or rare and chronic diseases.
Parliamentary under-secretary of state for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology Kanishka Narayan described the agreement as “the first-ever UK-US tech deal”. “I think it has the potential to transform lives right across Britain,” he added.
When asked about the lack of sufficient onshore tech skills, Narayan said: “The starting point is that Britain has amazing talent already.”
Along with the skills across universities, researchers and AI startups, he also spoke about Labour’s 50-point AI opportunities plan. “We are going to be laser-sharp focused on the execution of the skills element,” said Narayan. “We’ve been focused on making sure that we are getting people to invest in British talent and British firms.”
Among the goals he sees for the UK-US tech partnership is “to convince the very best founders across the world that Britain is the right place for them to build”. To achieve this, Narayan said the government is working with UK startup Nscale to deploy Europe’s largest graphics processing unit (GPU) clusters.
Read more about AI factories
- Is it time to build an AI factory: If AI is to deliver real benefits, firms need to scale its deployment. Developing an internal AI factory, akin to a digital factory model used by some, is one option.
- Exploring Nvidia's approach to AI factories: The AI hardware and software provider is focusing on building massive datacentres that do everything in the AI lifecycle, from data ingestion to inferencing and fine-tuning.
According to Narayan, Nvidia has committed to supply 120,000 GPUs to the UK over the next 12 months. “We’re announcing to every talented founder across the world that Britain now has a scale of compute availability, one fundamental input that gives them the confidence to build here,” he said.
Narayan said OpenAI will deploy 8,000 GPUs in the first phase. This is projected to grow up to 60,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell Ultra GPUs. Microsoft is also committed to investing £22bn, including 23,000 advanced GPUs, to deliver the UK’s largest AI supercomputer, in Loughton. Both of these deals also involve Nscale, which recently announced it was building an OpenAI Stargate project in Norway, using 100,000 Nvidia chips.
There is also the £5bn Google has invested in a datacentre facility in Waltham Cross.
Narayan said the opportunity for the UK was not only in building out sovereign compute at scale, but also to make the UK the world’s best place for the uptake and deployment of AI to help improve people’s lives.
Prime minister Keir Starmer said: “By teaming up with world-class companies from both the UK and US, we’re laying the foundations for a future where together we are world leaders in the technology of tomorrow, creating highly skilled jobs, putting more money in people’s pockets and ensuring this partnership benefits every corner of the United Kingdom.”
