• NVIDIA and partners will build UK AI factories by 2026 with 120,000 GPUs.
• The £11bn plan will support OpenAI, boost sovereign AI, and create jobs.

NVIDIA is putting major investment into building artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United Kingdom, working with partners including CoreWeave, Microsoft, and Nscale. By 2026, the companies plan to run new “AI factories” in the country that will power models from OpenAI and others, while also supporting the UK’s push for sovereign AI development.

The effort follows an announcement made three months ago at London Tech Week by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. The companies say the new buildout will create jobs, expand research opportunities, and feed into UK-US technology partnerships in fields like medicine and drug discovery. The investment – up to £11 billion – includes the installation of 120,000 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs in UK data centres, the largest deployment in the country’s history. Nscale will also scale up internationally, adding 300,000 Grace Blackwell GPUs worldwide.

“The United Kingdom is building the infrastructure for the AI industrial revolution – advancing science, transforming industries and creating new economic opportunities,” Huang said. “We are at the big bang of intelligence, and the United Kingdom’s Goldilocks ecosystem of world-class expertise, outstanding universities and vibrant industries is uniquely positioned to thrive in the age of AI.”

Starmer called the plan “a decisive step towards the UK becoming a world leader in AI,” saying it will mean “more jobs and investment, more money in people’s pockets and transformed public services – all part of our Plan for Change.”

New AI factories and supercomputers

Several projects are already underway. Nscale is installing 60,000 NVIDIA GPUs in the UK and rolling out hundreds of thousands more in the US, Portugal, and Norway. Alongside OpenAI and NVIDIA, Nscale is also launching Stargate UK, a new facility expected to house Blackwell Ultra GPUs by 2026. OpenAI plans to use this infrastructure to run its most advanced models, including GPT-5.

Nscale and Microsoft will also build what they describe as the UK’s most powerful supercomputer in Loughton, powered by more than 24,000 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell Ultra GPUs for Microsoft Azure services.

CoreWeave, meanwhile, is setting up a new data centre in Scotland, powered by renewable energy. Its cofounder Michael Intrator said the investment will give UK researchers and businesses access to advanced computing resources.

Asset manager BlackRock has also committed up to £500 million with Digital Gravity Partners to modernise UK data centres so they can support NVIDIA’s latest hardware.

Quantum research collaborations

Beyond traditional AI computing, NVIDIA is working with universities and startups to connect AI with quantum research.

• OQC and Digital Realty are setting up a quantum-AI hub in New York, using NVIDIA’s CUDA-Q platform.
• ORCA Computing, Imperial College London, and the Poznan Supercomputing Centre are developing hybrid-quantum neural networks.
• The University of Edinburgh is creating GPU-accelerated error-correction software.
• The University of Oxford is using AI to help control quantum hardware.
• SEEQC and the National Quantum Computing Centre are working on integrating quantum and GPU systems with NVIDIA technology.

Workforce and robotics programmes

NVIDIA is also working with techUK, robotics company Quanser, and training provider QA to build skills and strengthen the UK’s robotics ecosystem.

Through the programme, startups and researchers will get access to funding and training, while QA will deliver NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute courses on inference and generative AI. The effort is tied to the UK government’s broader AI skills push announced earlier this year.

Expanding UK’s AI ecosystem

Some projects are already in motion. The Isambard-AI supercomputer in Bristol, powered by NVIDIA Grace Hopper chips, launched in July and is supporting projects like:

• UK-LLM, a large language model project led by University College London and Bangor University.
• Nightingale AI, a health-focused foundation model trained on NHS data.
• PolluGen, a high-resolution pollution model developed at the University of Manchester.
• Ultrasound and electrostatics foundation models developed at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Cambridge.

NVIDIA is also working with UK robotics companies including Extend Robotics, Wayve, and Oxa, while life sciences firms like Basecamp Research, Isomorphic Labs, and Oxford Nanopore are using its systems for drug discovery and testing.

AI startups like Aveni, ElevenLabs, PolyAI, and Synthesia are also building new tools – from finance-focused large language models to voice and video agents – using NVIDIA infrastructure.

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