Overview
- OpenAI is growing its UK research footprint with an 88,500-square-foot King’s Cross lease for space to house more than 500 staff, even after pausing its Stargate UK data-centre project over energy costs and regulatory uncertainty.
- UK industrial electricity prices are reported at about four times US levels and nearly double France, which makes 24/7 GPU data centres too costly to run.
- Developers face grid connection waits of three to eight years, far longer than the 18 to 24 months it takes to build a site, which blocks hyperscale projects from going live.
- A new survey of 700 AI decision makers found one in five UK firms have already moved AI workloads abroad because of power costs, with many now reassessing where to deploy infrastructure.
- The government says it will push fixed-price power contracts and raise the Electricity Generator Levy to cut exposure to gas-driven price spikes, yet recent reporting and industry voices say these steps have not cleared the core hurdles for new data centres.