TL;DRA Guardian investigation found OpenAI apparently never visited a key site for its Stargate UK data centre project before it was announced. The partnership was paused in April 2026, and a previous investigation found the designated supercomputer site was a scaffolding yard with no evidence of construction.
OpenAI apparently failed to visit a key site earmarked for its Stargate UK data centre project before the initiative was announced, the Guardian reported on Friday. The revelation deepens questions about whether the UK government’s flagship AI infrastructure programme was built on press releases rather than due diligence.
Stargate UK, a partnership between OpenAI, Nvidia, and British cloud provider Nscale, was unveiled in September 2025 during Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK. The project promised up to 8,000 Nvidia GPUs deployed at sites in north-east England by Q1 2026, scalable to 31,000 over time, and sat within a broader £31 billion package of tech investments that the government presented as proof of Britain’s AI competitiveness.
The scaffolding yard
The Guardian had previously investigated the project’s physical reality in March 2026, when reporter Aisha Down visited the site of Nscale’s planned supercomputer in Loughton, Essex. She found a functioning scaffolding yard with no evidence that construction had begun on a facility that Nscale had said would be operational by the end of 2026.
