Alphabet to Invest £5bn in UK AI Infrastructure and Research
Google-owner Alphabet pledges £5bn over two years for data centres and DeepMind as UK-US tech ties spotlighted ahead of presidential visit
Alphabet, the owner of Google, announced a £5 billion ($6.8 billion) investment in the United Kingdom to fund artificial intelligence infrastructure and scientific research over the next two years, the company said in an exclusive interview with the BBC.
The announcement comes ahead of US President Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK and will be accompanied by the formal opening of a $1 billion (£735 million) data centre in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, which Chancellor Rachel Reeves is due to visit on Tuesday. The company said the new funds will expand that site and support work at London-based DeepMind, the AI research unit run by Sir Demis Hassabis.
Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s president and chief investment officer, described the UK as offering “profound opportunities” for the company’s advanced science work and said there was “now a US-UK special technology relationship.” She added that while there were “downside risks that we need to work on together to mitigate, there’s also tremendous opportunity in economic growth, in social services, advancing science.”
Porat told the BBC the investment would support both physical infrastructure and scientific research. She highlighted the UK government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan as a facilitating factor but said “there’s still work to be done to land that,” warning that capturing the economic upside of the AI boom was “not a foregone conclusion.”
Alphabet said the Waltham Cross facility would be air-cooled rather than water-cooled and that captured heat from the centre would be redeployed to heat local schools and homes. The company also said it had signed a deal with Shell to supply what it described as “95% carbon-free energy” for its UK investments.
Across governments and industry there have been concerns over the energy demands and environmental impact of AI data centres. Porat acknowledged intermittency challenges with renewable generation, saying “obviously wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine every hour of the day,” and called for grid modernization to balance periods of excess and shortfall in supply. She said Alphabet was building energy efficiency into microchips, models and data centres.
Porat addressed the potential labour-market effects of AI, saying the company was “spending a lot of time” on the jobs challenge and warning it would be “naive to assume that there isn't a downside” if firms only used AI to cut costs. She argued, however, that new industries and roles were emerging and that in fields such as nursing and radiology AI was likely to “collaborate with people rather than replacing them.” She urged individuals to start using AI to understand how it can assist their work.
The announcement follows a recent surge in Alphabet’s share price, which pushed the company to become the fourth listed technology firm to reach a market value above $3 trillion, joining Nvidia, Microsoft and Meta. Google’s public profile in AI has been elevated this year after courts in the United States declined to order a breakup of the company, and CEO Sundar Pichai has repositioned the firm as an “AI First” business. Porat said that the company’s recent performance had been driven by that strategic shift.
U.S.-U.K. trade tensions earlier this year included pressure from the U.S. administration on the UK to moderate its Digital Services Tax, which affected major technology firms including Google; that issue was not expected to feature in the week’s investment announcements. Additional multi-billion-dollar investments by other U.S. technology companies were expected to be announced in the next 24 hours, and analysts said the prospect of increased U.S. capital inflows, together with interest rate expectations, had contributed to strengthening sterling.
The UK government and industry face the task of balancing incentives for investment, regulatory oversight, environmental goals and labour-market transitions as major technology companies expand AI operations. Alphabet’s pledge adds a sizeable commitment to the UK’s AI ecosystem, with the company saying the funds will be directed at both hardware and research that it believes can drive scientific advances and economic growth.