Nvidia on Tuesday revealed that it plans to build new AI infrastructure in the United Kingdom.
The AI hardware and software giant is partnering with European AI vendor Nscale to scale up 300,000 Grace Blackwell GPUs — Nvidia’s most powerful AI chips — worldwide, including 60,000 GPUs in the U.K.
“This establishes Nscale as a global AI institute powerhouse, expanding Nscale’s footprint from the U.K. to North America, Norway and Portugal,” said David Hogan, Nvidia’s vice president enterprise EMEA, during a media briefing.
Nvidia also said that U.K. vendor Nscale will deploy Europe’s largest GPU shipment, 120,000 Blackwells, to data centers in England and Scotland. All the GPUs will be deployed by the end of 2026, the vendor said.
“This will truly make the U.K. an AI maker, not an AI taker,” Hogan said.
Meanwhile, Nscale, cloud GPU provider CoreWeave and Nvidia will together invest about $13 billion in AI infrastructure in the U.K.
The investment and partnership with Nscale comes a few months after Nvidia introduced a plan to help the U.K. train AI developers to build up a sovereign AI framework in the U.K.
A way to support the UK
The investment and partnership with Nscale is a way for Nvidia to invest in the U.K., said Nick Patience, an analyst at Futurum Group.
“They think the time is right to invest in the U.K. AI sector,” Patience said. “The U.K. has the talent; it has the venture capital. What it didn’t have was the infrastructure.”
He added that while the $13 billion number contains nuances, the investment is significant and will lead to the U.K. possessing the largest volume of GPUs in Europe.
It is also an example of the shift that is happening in the U.K. AI market, where the government is realizing that AI infrastructure matters as much as energy infrastructure, Patience continued.
“The U.K., like the rest of Europe that is not Russia, is very aware that it needs to build its own sovereign energy infrastructure,” he said. “Some parts of Europe, including the U.K., have been behind in the AI infrastructure build-out. That’s what’s behind this.”
Torsten Volk, an analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget, said the investment will also draw others to invest in the U.K.
“Nvidia building one of Europe’s largest GPU clusters in the U.K. will draw significant follow-on investments in fibre connectivity, the energy grid, renewable energy, more data center locations, and building and attracting talent,” Volk said. “Government often needs this pressure to make things happen to attract this type of investment.”
Some challenges
Nvidia’s move will incentivize further investments into the U.K.’s AI infrastructure, Volk added.
Patience, of the Futurum Group, said a key problem with this deal is that it’s not clear where Nscale will get the money for it.
The vendor revealed that it raised $155 million last December, but in April said it planned to raise $2.7 billion over three years.
“It will have to sell some equity or borrow the money, presumably,” Patience said.
Volk said another challenge will be building the right talent pool for the project.
“Since Brexit, attracting European talent has become much more difficult due to strict visa requirements,” he said. “At the same time, finding locations and filling in infrastructure gaps to make them viable will require significant effort and investment.”
Deal with CoreWeave
The partnership with Nscale is also one of many deals that Nvidia has rolled out in the past few days. On Sept.15, CoreWeave said it received an order from Nvidia for at least $6.3 billion. “It’s a bit of a strategic move,” Patience said. This move is also a way for Nvidia to guard against supply chain shortages, Patience said.
“There’s been supply chain issues for Nvidia chips,” he said. He added that Nvidia has more control over how the chips are being used if it provides it to CoreWeave.
Other challenges
While Nvidia is making deals with companies in the U.S. and U.K., the vendor also faces pressure in China. Chinese regulators have accused the AI vendor of violating the country’s antitrust law.
Along with that problem come reports that Nvidia’s new AI chip for the Chinese market has not met expectations. Reuters reported that the RTX6000D chip does not perform as well as the RTX5090, which is prohibited in China. Many Chinese AI vendors, including tech giants Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance, are waiting on whether Nvidia will also deploy its H20 chip or whether the U.S. government will approve Nvidia’s B30A chip.
Nvidia is not the only vendor investing in the U.K. Microsoft also on Tuesday revealed it will invest $30 billion in AI infrastructure and ongoing operations across the U.K. from 2025 through 2028. Included in the $30 billion is $15 billion in capital expenditures to build out the U.K.’s cloud and AI infrastructure, Microsoft said.