Syed Imran Haider 
AI-focused startup Coreweave and enterprise software firm ServiceNow have announced plans of investing billions of dollars in the United Kingdom.
This is a vote of confidence for Keir Starmer, as the Prime Minister is looking to draw in foreign investment.
The Announcement
According to ServiceNow, in the next five years, it plans on investing about $1.5 billion to grow its business in the U.K.
The US-based firm is planning on expanding its presence in the UK with new office. It currently employs 1,000 people in the country, but wants to grow its staff in the future.
The company said that the cash would be invested into localizing the data processing of its large language models (LLMs).
These are AI models that require training data in large quantities to be able to understand then generate text, similar to a human.
The firm stated that its data centers would boast GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia and they would support data processing on its LLMs in the UK.
It was referring to its data centers that are located in the Welsh city of Newport and in London. According to ServiceNow, this would support ‘domain specific LLMs’ for the UK government and clients.
ServiceNow is also planning on offering a new skills program in the country that would be available to 240,000 people.
The company’s CEO, Bill McDermott, said that the technology transformation in the UK was impressive. It had become a global leader in driving innovation in AI and that would benefit all communities.
AI Sovereignty
European regulators and policymakers have been calling for AI sovereignty. They want the data and technology that powers artificial intelligence systems to be stored in Europe.
The aim is to ensure that it reflects the history and culture of Europe accurately. As for CoreWeave, it is a cloud computing firm also made its own announcement about its investment plans.
The company rents expensive GPUs to developers who want to run and train large AI models. It said that it would make an investment of $978.6 million for supporting the demand for AI infrastructure in the UK.
This would be the firm’s second major investment in the country after it announced a commitment back in May worth £1 billion.
More Investments
Meanwhile, two data center operators in the United States also announced plans of investing billions in the United Kingdom.
CyrusOne is one of the companies and it disclosed that it was planning on increasing its investment to £2.5 billion in the next few years.
The second company was CloudHQ, which said that it was planning on setting up a data center in Didcot, Oxfordshire worth £1.9 billion.
According to the UK government, the total cloud infrastructure investments are worth £6.3 billion. Peter Kyle, the UK’s Technology Minister, talked about the investments.
He said that they were a vote of confidence in the country and for their approach of working with businesses and delivering growth.
