Microsoft, OpenAI, other US firms herald Trump's UK visit With pledges

By Mark Bergen, Ian King and Dina Bass

 

Microsoft Corp., OpenAI and other American companies announced plans to spend tens of billions of dollars on technology infrastructure in the UK, part of a series of business deals that coincide with President Donald Trump’s visit to the nation this week. 

 

The tech giants are dedicating more than £31 billion ($42.3 billion) to artificial intelligence systems, quantum computing initiatives and other tech projects, the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said in a statement on Tuesday. Joining Trump on the visit are several Silicon Valley luminaries, including Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang and Sam Altman from OpenAI, which is also bringing its Stargate program to the UK.

 

 

The announcements bolster an effort by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to strengthen ties with the US and boost technology growth. He’s pledged to fast-track planning approval for data centers and ease access to the power grid in the UK, which has some of the most expensive electricity in Europe. The UK government also said it’s opening a new AI Growth Zone, a data center facility that Starmer’s Labour Party has argued will bring jobs to the country.    

 

“The two countries are now pairing up,” Kanishka Narayan, an undersecretary for the UK’s science department, said in a press briefing. “At the heart of it, it’s a focus not just on the history of our special relationship but on our future.”

 

With the Silicon Valley deals, Starmer is avoiding a tactic used by some European nations, notably France, which has promoted homegrown AI firms and signaled its independence from US technology.  

 

OpenAI is at the center of a $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure project that Trump announced in January. The AI company has said that it will take its Stargate effort to other countries. For the British operation, OpenAI and partners such as Nscale Global Holdings Ltd. will be hosting as many as around 60,000 of Nvidia’s latest Blackwell semiconductors.

 

Of that, OpenAI will consider using as many as 8,000 of the chips in the first quarter of 2026 — with the potential to reach 31,000 over time. The UK Stargate project will span a number of locations, including a new AI Growth Zone in Northeast England. Narayan declined to say how much the companies would be investing in the project. 

 

Here are some of the other announcements: 

 

• Microsoft has agreed to spend $30 billion over four years on AI infrastructure and its existing business in the UK — in what the software company called its largest financial commitment to Britain. As part of the deal, it will build a supercomputer with more than 23,000 advanced graphics processing units, the chips used to power artificial intelligence software. It’s working in partnership with British data center company Nscale. The supercomputer will be housed at Nscale’s AI campus in Loughton near London.
• Nvidia said its technology will be part of an £11 billion investment in AI data centers inside and outside of the UK. It’s working with Nscale and CoreWeave Inc. on new facilities that will deploy 120,000 AI accelerator chips in the UK by 2026. Nscale is using Nvidia chips in its home country and other nations as part of a 300,000-chip-based computer build-out that the US company said will make it “a global infrastructure player.” Nvidia said that it’s investing in “accelerating the AI industrial revolution in the United Kingdom,” but declined to specify how much money it’s spending and in what manner.
• CoreWeave, which supplies data center capacity to companies like OpenAI, said it will invest £1.5 billion in the UK. It’s working with Nvidia and Scottish data center company DataVita Ltd. to put its technology in a DataVita-owned facility in Chapelhall. That data center, which runs on renewable energy, will deliver 31 megawatts of capacity and be online starting in the first quarter. CoreWeave’s spending comes on top of £1 billion the company is already investing in the UK at two sites — London Docklands and Crawley.
• Salesforce Inc., a seller of customer relationship software, said it will spend an additional $2 billion in the UK through 2030. That’s an extension of its five-year, $4 billion program announced in 2023.
• Earlier in the week, Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it would spend £5 billion over two years in the UK, including opening a data center in Hertfordshire.
• BlackRock Inc. said it will invest £500 million into data centers. The company’s CEO, Larry Fink, is joining Trump in the UK.

 

The UK joins other countries around the world in trying to build out local artificial intelligence infrastructure — what’s known as sovereign AI. Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, sees this trend as key to its future growth.  

 

Though the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker has already seen meteoric sales increases in the past two years, it gets much of its revenue from a handful of giant data center operators. The sovereign AI push will contribute to as much as $4 trillion in AI spending by the end of the decade, Huang has said.