AI giant Coreweave in £1bn UK investment as London picked for new European HQ
An American artificial intelligence (AI) group has announced plans to invest £1bn in the UK after opening a new office in London as its European headquarters.
Coreweave said the move will also create jobs across engineering, operations, finance and go-to-market while it is also preparing to open two data centres in the country this year and expand further in 2025.
The business was founded in 2017 and is based in New Jersey.
The news comes after a British AI startup that is creating autonomous systems for vehicles announced it had secured over $1bn (£800m) earlier this week.
Wayve’s Series C investment round was led by Japanese tech giant Softbank, along with Nvidia and existing investor Microsoft.
Also earlier this week, Scale AI also picked London as its European headquarters.
The US company is run by Alexandr Wang, who became the youngest self-made billionaire in the world at age 24, according to Forbes, in 2022.
Mike Intrator, co-founder and chief executive of Coreweave, said: “We are seeing unprecedented demand for AI infrastructure and London is an important AI hub that we are investing in.
“Expanding our physical footprint in the UK is an important milestone in the next phase of Coreweave’s growth.
“Coreweave’s infrastructure will fill a void in the cloud market by providing AI enterprises with localized high-performance compute solutions that will help build and deploy the next generation of AI applications.”
All three announcements this week included quotes from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as part of efforts to push out some much-needed good economic news for the government following the local election and mayoral results last week.
Sunak said: “Companies like Coreweave are powering the future of AI innovation, and I am proud that they’ve backed the UK with a £1bn investment into UK data centres and have established their European headquarters here – further cementing the UK’s position as an AI and tech superpower.
“We’re leaving no stone unturned to make the UK the best place for pioneering companies like Coreweave to grow their roots.
“With the third highest number of AI companies and private investment in AI in the world, it’s clear our plan is working.”