Lanarkshire gets £300m to fund AI growth zone

More jobs, investment and training opportunities are on the way for Lanarkshire, Scotland, as the AI growth zone secures a landmark £300m investment package and Dell Technologies announces it will establish a base in the area. Earlier this year, CoreWeave and DataVita said they will be investing £1.5bn into delivering a production-grade artificial intelligence (AI) cloud in Lanarkshire. This latest investment includes a £202m guarantee from the National Wealth Fund along with a financing package from ING, ABN AMRO, Santander, the Scottish National Investment Bank and Siemens Financial Services. Commenting on the investment, Oliver Holbourn, CEO of the National Wealth Fund, said: “New compute capacity is key to unlocking the UK’s future, yet private finance can be difficult to secure for emerging infrastructure at this scale. By laying the foundation for the wider Lanarkshire AI growth zone, we are helping support innovation and local economic opportunity, while delivering critical compute capacity for the UK’s sovereign AI ambitions.” The money will enable developer DataVita to expand its existing DV1 datacentre and construct a second, creating jobs during construction and operation while providing the infrastructure needed to attract more businesses and investment to Scotland in the years ahead. Commenting on the expansion, Danny Quinn, managing director at DataVita, said: “This type of investment in Scotland’s datacentre infrastructure would have been unthinkable just two or three years ago. That is the impact AI is having. Scotland has all the right ingredients to take advantage of the AI revolution and make it a core part of its economy.” Quinn said the first facility will be completed this year. “DataVita delivers AI infrastructure end to end, from the energy that powers it through to the applications that run on it. We have been doing this in Scotland for more than 10 years. The UK needs its own AI capability, built here and run here, and we are grateful to the National Wealth Fund and our lenders for backing a project that is already delivering it,” he added. Alongside DataVita’s expansion, Dell Technologies said it will be moving its Scottish team to Mercury House in Lanarkshire’s AI Innovation Park. Steve Young, UK managing director for Dell Technologies, said: “Our Scottish team moving to Lanarkshire means we will join a growing community of organisations helping to advance AI innovation, skills and collaboration. Being part of that ecosystem will help us strengthen relationships across Scotland while continuing to support customers and partners across the UK on their AI journeys.” The government said the Lanarkshire AI growth zone was created to ensure Scotland secures a share of the opportunities promised by investment in AI. The aim is to bring together energy, infrastructure and local talent to help attract companies that might otherwise invest elsewhere while creating jobs and opportunities closer to home. UK AI minister Kanishka Narayan sees investment in AI infrastructure as key to attracting investment, creating jobs and helping to shape the industries of the future. “That’s why today’s announcements matter,” he said. “They will help ensure Scotland is at the forefront of one of the biggest economic opportunities of our time, bringing investment, re-industrialisation and opportunities to communities like Lanarkshire. “For local people, that means more than new buildings and technology. It means the chance to develop new skills, access new careers and benefit from the growth and investment that AI can bring.” Read more AI growth zone stories The UK government’s AI growth zones strategy : Plans to make the UK an AI superpower imply pervasive use of the technology. Ramping up adoption of AI will require more datacentres to host compute-intensive workloads. Government gives regulatory boost to support AI in legal sector : Legal firms have been invited to participate in the new Legal Services AI Growth Lab to reduce barriers to the use of artificial intelligence in legal services.