One year on from the UK's grand AI plan: has its infrastructure buildout been a success?

When the U.K. announced its AI Opportunities Action Plan — a grand blueprint to deploy the tech across society — in January, Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared the strategy would make the country an “AI superpower.”

One of the key pillars of this plan was a rapid buildout of data centres capable of providing the huge compute requirements for the rollout of AI. This would be driven by “AI growth zones” — designated areas with relaxed planning permission and improved access to power.

Nearly one year on, and Nvidia

, Microsoft

, and Google