The press releases saying a gleaming supercomputer on the outskirts of north London depict a glass and concrete constructing, rising from a tree-lined road. Accompanied by photographs of glowing blue robotic faces, it seems like the centre of a technological revolution.
By the finish of this yr, that artist’s impression is supposed to be a actuality.
However when the Guardian visited final month, there was no signal of it. As a substitute, the four-acre plot in Loughton was a depot stacked with pylons and scrap metallic beneath a corrugated roof, whereas flatbed lorries drove out and in stacked with poles.
9 months before the mission is due to be accomplished, it is nonetheless a working scaffolding yard.
The story of the Loughton supercomputer is an perception into the dizzying ambitions for synthetic intelligence as an financial powerhouse, in the UK and past – but additionally how these hopes can dissolve right into a much less thrilling actuality.
Round the world, billions of {dollars} and the fortunes of governments, banks and pension funds are staked on the guarantees of some huge corporations – that they’ll quickly construct out AI infrastructure and essentially remake the international economic system.
Nvidia’s chief govt, Jensen Huang, appeared to supply a vote of confidence in the UK as a house for a few of this AI funding, making two visits to London in June and September 2025. At London tech week, he appeared onstage with Keir Starmer and known as the UK’s tech ecosystem “the envy of the world”. Later that yr, throughout the authorities’s frenzy of AI dealmaking, Huang mentioned individuals should invest in the UK “if they need to get wealthy” and predicted the UK can be an “AI superpower”.
However key investments in the UK interrogated by the Guardian are not as they’ve been introduced. Huge sums of cash do not seem to be substantive commitments to the UK’s economic system – and “new” datacentre tasks have confirmed to be outdated buildings with new chips.
It is a world subject. A report this month discovered that half of the world’s datacentre tasks due to come on-line this yr could face delays. In the US, OpenAI’s $500bn Stargate mission has been considerably pushed again over stakeholder squabbles.
“There has been a number of narrative crafted by tech corporations that hyperlinks AI to financial development,” mentioned Cecilia Rikap, a professor of economics at College School London. “Firms declare that they are doing this large funding. Nevertheless it is a story that doesn’t maintain water.”
One main funding is the Loughton supercomputer. The federal government introduced the mission in 2025, a part of a plan to “turbocharge” the economic system. Experiences say it is going to be three times as powerful as the quickest supercomputer in the US, the “international prime tier” for AI infrastructure.
The corporate that is to develop the supercomputer, Nscale, was a small London startup that has by no means constructed a datacentre.
Nscale payments itself as an “AI hyperscaler” and advertises 11 datacentres on its web site, together with in Portugal and the website in Loughton. All of these websites seem to be both beneath development or premises acquired from different entities.
The federal government’s announcement mentioned Nscale had “signed a contract” to construct the supercomputer by 2026, and was investing $2.5bn in the UK’s economic system; Nscale mentioned it had already purchased a website in Loughton, and promised that 750 jobs can be created as the supercomputer was constructed.
A later announcement, in September, mentioned Microsoft would accomplice with Nscale to construct the website, a part of the firm’s $30bn funding in the UK. Microsoft has advised that $15bn of this funding is for the Loughton supercomputer.
Nevertheless, the Guardian understands that Nscale’s “contract”, and Nscale and Microsoft’s $17.5bn “funding”, are not commitments to the UK authorities, different UK corporations, or the UK economic system.
The contract the authorities was referring to seems to be a contract between Microsoft and Nscale, in accordance to an Nscale spokesperson. The federal government mentioned it had no mechanism to audit the $2.5bn funding, which “could properly embody tools and capital funding” and was “not a proper contract, slightly an intention to commit capital”.
Like the US agency CoreWeave, one other key participant in the authorities’s AI ambitions, Nscale started as a bitcoin mining firm, spinning off from the Australian crypto agency Arkon Vitality in 2024. The funding is anticipated to principally include Nvidia chips.
As for Microsoft, it clarified to the Guardian that it was not constructing the supercomputer, however had agreed to grow to be Nscale’s buyer when the datacentre was constructed.
The $17.5bn funding due to this fact represents a plan, by a UK firm, to purchase chips made in Taiwan by a US firm, put them in a constructing in Loughton, and hire them to one other US tech firm.
Requested about how the website would create 750 jobs, Nscale may not say how this determine had been calculated.
Whether or not the supercomputer can be constructed by yr’s finish is one other matter. Land information seem to point out that Nscale has not but been registered as proprietor of the website], over a yr after the claimed buy. Nscale may not say whether or not the firm owned the land, and will not give a date on which any buy had occurred.
Nscale filed planning permission to construct the supercomputer throughout the final week of February, after the Guardian had began making inquiries. It is understood that Nscale intends development to start “very quickly”, in the subsequent couple of months.
The Guardian understands it is extremely unlikely the website could be accomplished this yr, because it typically takes 18 to 36 months to construct a hyperscale AI website – akin to, presumably, one among the world’s strongest supercomputers.
Nscale mentioned: “As a UK-headquartered firm, we stay dedicated to the UK funding we introduced – with the Loughton mission in help of Microsoft progressing as we envisaged. We’re investing not solely in the website itself but additionally in offsite energy infrastructure, native contractors and native suppliers.”
An important characteristic of the international AI economic system is perhaps that whether or not or not datacentres are constructed, economies develop and jobs are created, corporations akin to Nscale – and their shareholders – stand to make a windfall.
CoreWeave is one other central characteristic of the authorities’s AI plans, and is due to make investments £1.5bn into an “AI hub” in Lanarkshire. Like Nscale, the US firm was initially a bitcoin miner before pivoting to AI; it is anticipated to construct AI datacentres throughout the US and Europe.
Final month, US shareholders filed a lawsuit in opposition to the firm alleging that it had hid information about its functionality to construct these datacentres, even because it went public and its valuation soared. That suit says the firm hid the details about development delays throughout its datacentres, misrepresenting its skill to deploy AI “at huge scale”. When the information got here out, six months after CoreWeave floated on the market, its worth fell dramatically.
CoreWeave mentioned it was conscious of the go well with, including that the claims have been with out advantage and it could defend itself vigorously.
If the allegations are proved in courtroom, the hid information could have allowed its buyers – corporations akin to Nvidia, which poured cash into it before it went public – to make steeper income when it provided its shares on the market.
“There’s a number of strain to get an IPO, to get everyone’s cash to get all the preliminary buyers made complete,” mentioned Alvin Nguyen, an analyst at Forrester.
Nscale, in the meantime, raised a $1.1bn funding spherical in September, shortly after the authorities introduced the firm would type a vital a part of the UK’s Stargate mission. At round this time, Nvidia acquired a major stake in the firm, by an funding of £500m.
None of this cash has but appeared on Nscale’s stability sheets, as the firm has but to file accounts. Nevertheless, in October, the firm allotted greater than 2.9m shares at a worth of 1 pence apiece.
Nscale on Monday mentioned it raised a $2bn funding spherical, sending its valuation hovering to $14.6bn. These 1 pence shares now seem to be price tons of of 1000’s of instances their allotted worth. It is unclear who holds Nscale’s shares, however its buyers embody Nvidia, in addition to funds akin to Aker SA and Blue Owl Administration.
Nscale contends that there have been totally different courses of shares that had been allotted, and that different components sophisticated the evaluation.
“It’s form of a 350,000% return on funding,” mentioned Nguyen. “There’s only a few issues that will provide you with that, proper?”
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