Two new UK-based data centres have been launched by New York-based cloud provider CoreWeave as Britain announces its AI Opportunities Action Plan. 

CoreWeave announced that two new centres, part of the company’s long-term UK-based AI and data infrastructure strategy, are now operational, one in London’s Docklands and the other in Crawley. 

The sites will host what CoreWeave called some of Europe’s largest NVIDIA AI platform deployments, powered by NVIDIA H200 GPUs and scaled with NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking. 

The American decacorn has been bullish on Britain’s AI potential, having said in May last year it would be investing £1bn in UK compute infrastructure, with chief business officer Mike Mattacola saying the choice of destination was an “easy decision”. 

“We think it’s enough to get compute into the market, stimulate the market and get people what they need,” Mattacola said. 

Alongside the infrastructure announcement, CoreWeave said in 2024 that it would be placing its European headquarters in London and expected to invest a further £750m into the UK economy.  

“The UK is an important market for CoreWeave, with our European headquarters here and further operational plans for the country. We are pleased to be partnering with Digital Realty and Global Switch to deliver the next generation of AI infrastructure in the UK,” Mattacola said. 

The launch comes as the UK government has published its new AI strategy that includes speedier planning approvals for data centre construction. 

“This investment is a huge vote of confidence in the UK’s digital technology sector and is exactly the kind we want to see as we grow the economy and use AI to drive efficiency,” said Chancellor Rachel Reeves. 

“We are delivering our Plan for Change with investment and reform to deliver higher living standards across every part of the country.” 

The action plan also noted that three major IT infrastructure groups – Vantage Data Centres, Nscale and Kyndryl – have committed an additional £14bn to supporting the country’s compute capacity. 

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