San Francisco – The leaders of OpenAI and Nvidia plan to pledge support for billions of dollars in UK data centre investments when they head to the country next week at the same time as US President Donald Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The two companies are teaming up with London-based data centre business Nscale Global Holdings on the project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang are part of a delegation of US executives expected to visit the country. OpenAI is poised to spend billions of dollars as part of the plan, the people said. American companies across a range of industries are expected to announce tens of billions of dollars in UK investments during Mr Trump’s visit next week, the people said.
An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment. Representatives for OpenAI, the White House and Nscale didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Political and business leaders across Europe have been calling for more investment into facilities to support generative AI, citing fears of declining growth and ceding the technology to the United States and China.
In January, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a plan to “turbo-charge AI” with investment in data centres and chips. He also called for the creation of “AI growth zones”, where data centres can get fast-tracked planning approval and access to the electricity grid.
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is looking to enlarge its commercial operations in Europe, where it faces far stricter regulations and more skepticism of Silicon Valley technology. In May, it announced OpenAI for Countries, a plan to expand its signature Stargate data centre project abroad. In July, it said it would be the anchor customer for a new data centre in Norway built by Nscale with funding from Norwegian investor Aker ASA.
Nscale, which launched in May 2024, previously pledged to invest US$2.5 billion (S$3.2 billion) in the UK’s data centre industry over three years, including the purchase of a site in Loughton, Essex. When Nscale announced the Loughton site in January, it said the facility could house up to 45,000 of Nvidia’s GB200 super chips, designed for AI. It did not disclose any customer at the time.
In April, Nscale was looking to raise US$2.7 billion to build AI infrastructure on the back of a pending partnership with ByteDance, Bloomberg reported at the time.
OpenAI’s European investments are dwarfed by its efforts elsewhere, including a 5-gigawatt pledge from the first international outpost in the United Arab Emirates. The US Stargate project is targeting 4.5 gigawatts of capacity, Bloomberg News reported earlier. For that effort, OpenAI and its partners, including SoftBank Group and Oracle, pledged to spend as much as US$500 billion. BLOOMBERG
