UK to host largest European GPU cluster under £11 billion Nvidia investment plans

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Nvidia has announced the UK will have Europe’s largest GPU cluster, totaling 120,000 Blackwell GPUs by the end of 2026, in a major boost for the country’s sovereign compute capacity.

The chip giant hailed £11 billion of total investment in the UK AI ecosystem, constituting chip orders and a rapid build-out of infrastructure such as AI factories.

These are expected to serve enterprise compute demand, researchers, and consumers.

The total is made up of investment from Nvidia partners Nscale and CoreWeave, with UK-based Nscale alone set to deploy 60,000 GB300 chips.

As part of the deal, Nscale will deploy a total of 300,000 Blackwell GPUs worldwide with the US, UK, Norway, and Portugal named as areas of investment.

“The UK has a true Goldilocks opportunity,” said David Hogan, VP for enterprise, EMEA at Nvidia.

“We have the right conditions for rapid AI growth and innovation in the country. The only thing that's been missing is infrastructure. Today we are announcing that Nvidia is building new AI infrastructure to support strong, secure and sustainable economic growth across the UK and serve as a platform with groundbreaking research.

Nvidia putting its money where its mouth is

In June, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang praised the UK for its immense AI potential but noted it lacks the sovereign compute capabilities and infrastructure to capitalize on the generative AI ‘boom’.

Today’s announcement is a step toward addressing this gap by both Nvidia and its partners, securing the UK’s spot as Europe’s AI hub. With 120,000 GPUs deployed by the end of 2026, the UK would comfortably secure the title of largest GPU deployment in Europe, Hogan explained in a call with assembled press.

This still places the UK behind the US, with OpenAI targeting a deployment of two million GPUs for its Oracle-backed Stargate project, Meta seeking multiple gigawatt data centers representing millions of GPUs, and xAI in the process of increasing its Colossus training cluster to 200,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs.

Elsewhere, the UAE is reportedly in negotiations with the US government to import 500,000 Nvidia GPUs per year for AI deployment.

Nevertheless, the UK is set to have an order of magnitude more chips at its disposal by this time next year.

Nscale’s pledged figure represents a significant increase on the 10,000 GPUs it announced it would deploy at London Tech Week in June, coinciding with Huang’s comments.

Hogan clarified that the £11 billion investment is inclusive of Nscale’s global deployment, but stressed that as the firm is headquartered in the UK, worldwide exports are nonetheless a significant boost for the region’s AI economy.

“We're delighted to announce Nscale's commitment to UK AI infrastructure today, including through Stargate UK and building the most powerful supercomputer in the country with Microsoft,” said Josh Payne, CEO at Nscale, in response to the announcement.

“As a UK-based company, we're showing how we can be makers, not takers, of the most important technology of our time.”

Of the 60,000 GPUs pledged by Nscale, 8,000 will be used by OpenAI for ‘Stargate UK’. This is the latest deployment of OpenAI infrastructure under the ‘Stargate’ brand, following its $500 billion US project and Stargate Norway expansion.

Though Nvidia didn’t provide an immediate breakdown of how the 240,000 chips Nscale is deploying outside the UK would be allocated, in July it announced plans to deliver 100,000 GPUs with Nscale at Stargate Norway.

This leaves 140,000 currently unaccounted for, with the as-yet-unannounced sites in the US and Portugal potentially filling the gap.

New AI ‘growth zones’ are coming

The move marks the latest big announcement on AI infrastructure for the UK over the last year. The government unveiled its AI Opportunity Action Plan in January, in which it laid out plans to establish ‘AI growth zones’ where the construction of data centers would be fast tracked and given priority access to the national grid.

Coinciding with Nvidia’s announcement, the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) announced a new AI growth zone in North East England, across Blyth and Cobalt Park outside Newcastle.

Blackstone announced £10 billion for a data center at the Blyth site in September 2024 and the DSIT stated the new zone holds potential for a further £20 billion in investment from other partners.

Stargate UK will be partially located at the Cobalt Park site, with the remainder of its infrastructure not yet allocated. Nvidia revealed CoreWeave and Nscale will be deploying chips across England and Scotland, raising the potential for further AI growth zone announcements.

In addition to its landmark announcement on GPU investment, Nvidia announced a new combined quantum hardware and AI supervision center in New York, launched by Digital Realty and Oxford Quantum Circuits.

The announcement coincides with President Trump’s state visit to the UK, during which a number of high-profile tech partnerships and announcements are being unveiled.

Executives such as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expected to play a role in the week’s proceedings.

Google announced a £5 billion investment into UK infrastructure, announced at the opening of a new data center in Broxbourne to expand its UK cloud availability. The investment total includes UK R&D and engineering, including AI-related costs at Google DeepMind.

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Rory Bathgate is Features and Multimedia Editor at ITPro, overseeing all in-depth content and case studies. He can also be found co-hosting the ITPro Podcast with Jane McCallion, swapping a keyboard for a microphone to discuss the latest learnings with thought leaders from across the tech sector.

In his free time, Rory enjoys photography, video editing, and good science fiction. After graduating from the University of Kent with a BA in English and American Literature, Rory undertook an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at King’s College London. He joined ITPro in 2022 as a graduate, following four years in student journalism. You can contact Rory at rory.bathgate@futurenet.com or on LinkedIn.