It's rare to see such big numbers as this being bandied about this side of the pond. Deals in the tens of billions of dollars are usually the preserve of those big American tech companies. But US President Donald Trump is currently visiting our little island and already the cash is splashing, as Reuters reports that a $42 billion pact has been made.
The 'Tech Prosperity Deal' reached between Trump and the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer includes a bunch of things, such as joint AI healthcare model development and work on quantum computing and civil nuclear projects.
The pact includes some specific deals by big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia. On the latter front, and certainly to the interest and envy of many a PC gamer, Nvidia has said it will deploy 120,000 GPUs across Britain, with up to 60,000 of these being Blackwell chips for Nscale.
That AI supercomputer upgrade, in collaboration with OpenAI and Microsoft, will be the biggest in Britain.
We've seen Nvidia announce its partnership with Britain and European countries already, but not on this scale. For instance, in June, Nvidia announced its partnership with France, Britain, and Germany to deploy thousands of GPUs for data centres and the like. But these were in the low double digits—less than 20,000 GPUs in each case—not 120,000.
There have been partnerships struck aiming at triple digits of GPUs, though, such as with Norway. This was also in partnership with Nscale and OpenAI, and was also to work towards Stargate.
Stargate, for those unaware, is a $500 billion OpenAI project to roll out AI infrastructure across the US—and now the UK—by building new data centres in key locations. OpenAI says that "Stargate UK ensures OpenAI’s world-leading AI models can run on local computing power in the UK, for the UK." Data centres will be placed across the UK, including in Cobalt Park in the North East, with the hope that it will bring more jobs to the North East of the country.
Nvidia says that it is "investing in accelerating the AI industrial revolution in the United Kingdom, working with partners including CoreWeave, Microsoft and Nscale to build the nation’s next generation of AI infrastructure. By the end of 2026, the companies will build and operate AI factories that will serve leading AI models, including those from OpenAI, to enable the U.K.’s sovereign AI goals for building a platform to power innovation, growth and opportunity across the economy."
So, much more AI is heading to the first stop on the European side of the Atlantic. And naturally, Nvidia gets the first call for the hardware to get it all up and running. 60,000 Blackwell chips, eh? Fancy chucking a few of those our way, for gaming? No, I thought not. Oh well, onwards with AI it is.
