Huang chips in £500m for AI start-up to boost Britain
Nvidia has agreed to invest £500 million in an AI infrastructure start-up, which the US tech giant’s billionaire founder said “could be a national champion for the UK”.
The equity investment in Nscale, a London-headquartered company that emerged from “stealth” mode only last year, was among a flurry of tech deals involving some of America’s leading AI companies to coincide with President Trump’s state visit and a deepening UK- US technology partnership.
In a press conference in London yesterday ahead of a state banquet at Windsor Castle, Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s co-founder and chief executive, predicted Nscale could generate cumulative revenues of up to £50 billion over the next six years.
“Three months ago we convinced ourselves that Nscale could be a national champion for the UK, to be the UK AI infrastructure technology company,” Huang said. “They won’t be the only one. They surely are one of the most successful ones. And we’re excited to invest in them.”
Huang also trumpeted that the UK “is going to be an AI superpower”, in a boost to the government’s ambitions.
Nvidia’s large investment comes just ten months after Nscale, founded by Josh Payne, 33, its Australian chief executive, raised $155 million in a series A funding round, led by Sandton Capital Partners, the New York investor, to accelerate its expansion across Europe and North America. It followed a $30 million seed funding raise a year earlier in December 2023.
Nscale is developing data centres, deploying GPU (graphics processing unit) infrastructure and delivering AI cloud services, a “full-stack” approach.
The company formed part of the government’s AI action plan announced in January following a review by Matt Clifford, the entrepreneur.
Nscale said at the time that it would invest $2.5 billion to support the UK’s data centre infrastructure over the next three years and signed a contract to build the largest “UK sovereign” AI data centre in Loughton, Essex, by 2026.
Nscale had said the data centre, its first in the UK, would create 500 jobs during construction and a further 250 over three years to run the facility. It also set out plans to begin construction of more modular UK-based data centres this year, which it said would provide AI computing infrastructure for industries and research institutions, “ensuring data remains securely within Europe”.
In the flurry of partnerships with big US tech firms announced this week, Nscale said it was working with Microsoft to build “one of the UK’s most powerful AI supercomputers” at the site in Loughton. The company said it would initially house about 23,000 Nvidia GPUs, delivered in the first quarter of 2027, and would help provide Microsoft’s Azure services in the UK.
Globally, Nscale has ambitions to deploy 300,000 Nvidia GPUs, which are highly prized because of their power and efficiency in processing data. Demand vastly outstrips supply.
In the press conference, Huang added: “By the end of next year, we’ll probably have 300,000 GPUs put online with Nscale. Just to put that in perspective, we’re going to have a technology company in the UK over the next six years or so, offtake revenues, that scales up to £50 billion. Nscale is going to be a very large UK technology company. I’m very excited to see that. I’m delighted to be a partner, delighted to invest in them.”
The recently incorporated Nscale entity registered at Companies House is yet to file accounts.
Separately, Nscale, Nvidia and OpenAI are partnering to establish Stargate UK, an infrastructure platform designed to deploy OpenAI’s technology in the country. The platform will be based across a number of sites, including at Cobalt Park in the North East.
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