Overview
- OpenAI said Thursday it put its Stargate UK phase on hold, citing high electricity prices and an uncertain regulatory path for long‑term investment.
- Stargate UK was planned with Nvidia and Nscale to deploy about 8,000 graphics processors, with room to scale to roughly 31,000, across sites such as Cobalt Park to provide sovereign compute for public services and security uses.
- The company says it will restart when conditions improve, and it is continuing to hire in London and deliver on its memorandum with the government to pilot frontier AI in public services.
- Industry groups point to steep industrial power costs and long waits for grid connections as core hurdles, with Ofgem noting about 140 data centers seeking hookups that would draw roughly 50 gigawatts at peak demand.
- Reuters and others describe the pause as a setback to the UK’s AI hub ambitions, and a government spokesperson said officials are still working with OpenAI and peers to strengthen domestic compute capacity; the project was first announced last September during a broader US‑UK tech push.