Google has announced a £1 billion investment in constructing a data centre just outside of London, marking the U.S. technology giant's latest commitment to meeting the increasing demand for internet services in the region.
The data centre, situated on a 33-acre (13-hectare) site acquired by Google in 2020, will be positioned in Waltham Cross, approximately 15 miles north of central London, according to a statement from the Alphabet-owned company. In response to Google's investment, the British government, advocating for increased business investment to support new infrastructure, particularly in growing sectors like technology and artificial intelligence, hailed it as a "huge vote of confidence" in the UK.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak commented in the Google statement, "Google's £1 billion investment is a testament to the fact that the UK is a centre of excellence in technology and has huge growth potential." This investment follows Google's £1 billion acquisition of a central London office building in 2022, near Covent Garden, and another site in nearby King's Cross, where the company is constructing a new office and where its AI subsidiary, DeepMind, is also located.
The announcement comes shortly after Microsoft unveiled plans to invest £2.5 billion ($3.2 billion) in Britain over three years, including expanding its data centre capacity to support future AI services. Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat stated in the release, "This new data centre will help meet the growing demand for our AI and cloud services and bring crucial compute capacity to businesses across the UK while creating construction and technical jobs."
Google, with a workforce of over 7,000 people in Britain, highlighted that the waste heat generated by the data centre presents an opportunity for energy conservation that can benefit the local community.