Blackstone invests £10B to build Europe's 'biggest AI datacenter' in UK
- Reference: 1727370006
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/09/26/backstone_ai_datacenter/
- Source link:
The facility, touted as the “biggest AI datacenter” in Europe, is slated for construction near Blyth, Northumberland, at the site of the now defunct BritishVolt battery plant. The project is expected to bring more than 4,000 jobs to the region, 1,200 of which will be related to the construction of the site.
“New investment such as the one we’ve announced with Blackstone today is a huge vote of confidence in the UK and it proves that Britain is back as a major player on the global stage and we’re open for business,” Starmer said in a canned [1]statement .
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Alongside the £10 billion to fund the datacenter, Blackstone has also committed to investing £110 million to upskill workers to run the facility and upgrade transportation infrastructure in the region.
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However, we expect the bulk of Blackstone’s investment will go to AI accelerators, though it remains to be seen whose chips will power the facility. While Nvidia’s upcoming Blackwell accelerators might seem the natural choice due to the maturity of the GPU giant’s software and hardware ecosystem, Intel and AMD have grown far more competitive in recent generations.
AMD’s Instinct MI300-series accelerators have gained considerable momentum in recent quarters, with the House of Zen [5]forecasting the GPUs will drive $4.5 billion in revenues in 2024. Meanwhile, Intel this week officially launched its Gaudi3 accelerators, which [6]boast performance competitive with Nvidia’s venerable H100s, while undercutting them on price.
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Whatever accelerators end up powering the facility, Blackstone will be able to afford a lot of them.
While it might seem strange for a private equity firm to be building datacenters, the business of renting AI infrastructure has become an incredibly lucrative enterprise. As our sibling site The Next Platform previously [8]explored , an investment of about $1.5 billion to build, deploy, and network an AI datacenter today would net you roughly $5.27 billion in revenues within four years. With an investment totaling $13.4 billion, Blackstone should make a killing on the site, if, of course, AI boom doesn't fizzle before it comes online.
Blackstone is also no stranger to these developments. This spring, the investment firm joined BlackRock and others to [9]inject $7.5 billion in debt financing into CoreWeave’s rent-a-GPU racket.
[10]Memory-maker Micron predicts new wave of server consolidation
[11]Altman reportedly asks Biden to back a slew of multi-gigawatt-scale AI datacenters
[12]Microsoft cash to help reignite Three Mile Island atomic plant
[13]Datacenters bleed watts and cash – all because they're afraid to flip a switch
Whether Blackstone decided to cut out the middleman and launch a GPU cloud of its own or if it’ll tap another firm like CoreWeave to actually run the Blyth site remains to be seen.
Having said that, we can’t help but notice that earlier this year CoreWeave [14]announced a £1 billion project to establish a European headquarters in London and construct a pair of AI datacenters in the UK.
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We’ve reached out to Blackstone for comment on the datacenter development; we’ll let you know if we hear anything back. ®
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[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-tells-us-investors-britain-is-open-for-business-as-he-secured-major-10-billion-deal-to-drive-growth-and-create-jobs
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZvXZg3eLwcA8-e6-TE-U-AAAAEM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZvXZg3eLwcA8-e6-TE-U-AAAAEM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZvXZg3eLwcA8-e6-TE-U-AAAAEM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/amd_q2_2024/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/intel_gaudi_ai_accelerator/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZvXZg3eLwcA8-e6-TE-U-AAAAEM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.nextplatform.com/2024/05/02/how-to-make-more-money-renting-a-gpu-than-nvidia-makes-selling-it/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/coreweave_debt_deal_with_investment/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/micron_q4_2024/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/altman_5gw_dc/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/20/three_mile_island_nuclear_plant_microsoft_ai/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/20/datacenters_waste_watts_server_power/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/13/coreweave_uk_expansion/
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZvXZg3eLwcA8-e6-TE-U-AAAAEM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I think it'll be a similar case to the previous owner of the site: Trouser the bungs and run
What do you mean what they'll do with the money?
IT WILL TRICKLE DOWN!!!
A nice fat juicy target
for the plebs who will get fed up with the constant power cuts while this (And all the other AI DC's) keep running.
Cutting their power is going to be fair game in their eyes. These things suck up power that we don't have and can't generate. That means more imports of leccy which will drive up the prices for all of us.
Barstewards.
Is there no one in the current Government (who has not taken a bung or three) that has the brains to stop them before we revolt?
Re: A nice fat juicy target
I'll wait for people to come in and say that UK grid has capacity.
After all such datacentre's energy consumption will amount to how many EVs?
Re: A nice fat juicy target
Locally bits might, but its been a problem for some years that DC operators turn up, tell National Grid they want capacity, and NG "reserve" it on the system on a first come first served basis, and that then sterilises potential developments that need grid connections such as new housing.
I doubt that's the case in Northumberland, but it's an established problem for some areas in and around London.
With no proper, costed national strategy for affordable and reliable energy we really should not be letting anybody build DCs for "AI".
Live in a box so the rich can learn to put glue on their pizza.
What is the purpose of this beyond driving absurd electric demand that real people can't afford to turn the lights on?
Announced? Nothing to do with Starmer.
Misleading title and quotes from Starmer. The deal was done by Northumberland County Council, with a little help from Sunak some time before the election.
The receivers acting for BritishVolt did the actual announcing - in April this year - that they'd sold the site to Blackstone.
Starmer trying to claim credit for it made before the election & the press just reprint the press release essentially.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/blackstone-to-buy-former-britishvolt-site-for-qts-data-center-in-northumberland-uk/
https://www.northumberland.gov.uk/News/2024/Apr/Deal-agreed-for-multi-billion-pound-AI-investment.aspx
Nothing has changed other than legalise were finalised.
How many jobs?
" =expected to bring more than 4,000 jobs to the region, 1,200 of which will be related to the construction of the site."
I don't get it. It's a lot fo work to build, so 1,200 I'll buy, but the other 2,800 seems like one of those magic numbers only economists can come up with it.
Modern datacentres invest heavily in automation to minimise staffing levels. I don't care how big it is, it isn't going to directly employ more than a couple of hundred across all functions. So where are the other 2,600 coming in?
Local cluster industry thinking doesn't work for things which mainly buy chips from the international market and sell services exclusively via network. And why would they need to upgrade local transport infrastructure?
Don't suppose it matters, nothing'll ever get build on that site anyway.
I've legitimately lost track of how many of these AI datacenter pipedreams people have planned in the last year throughout the globe. I'm mostly just curious what these people are going to do with all the money when they inevitably don't build them (due to energy, logistics, geopolitical issues, sustainability and viability of AI, etc. you know the usual stuff they never mention)