Microsoft Reportedly Pulls the Plug on UK Supercomputer Unveiled During Trump's Visit

Microsoft has reportedly withdrawn from the agreement to anchor what was billed as the United Kingdom's largest artificial intelligence supercomputer, stepping away from a project unveiled during President Donald Trump's state visit last year.

The company recently terminated its contract for the roughly $2.7 billion (£2 billion) data centre being built by Nscale in Loughton, Essex, according to The Telegraph. Microsoft had been among Nscale's two largest customers and the anchor tenant for the site, which was to carry its Azure cloud capacity in Britain. Microsoft declined to comment and gave no public reason for the decision, and neither company has publicly tied the withdrawal to the site's power problems.

The supercomputer was announced as part of a $30 billion (£22 billion) commitment Microsoft made on 16 September 2025, timed to Trump's second state visit, and it was the largest investment the company had ever made in Britain. About half the sum, $15 billion (£11 billion), was earmarked for cloud and AI infrastructure. The machine was to run on 23,040 Nvidia GB300 chips, drawing 50 megawatts of power and scalable to 90 megawatts.

At the launch, Microsoft chairman and chief executive Satya Nadella said the partners would build 'the UK's largest supercomputer, powered by over 23,000 GPUs.' Then Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer welcomed the pledge as a vote of confidence in British technology.

The commitment was the biggest of several US technology pledges around the visit, worth about $42 billion (£31 billion) in all, and the same package launched Stargate UK, a separate venture pairing Nscale with OpenAI and Nvidia.

Power Grid Delays Stall the Project

Months of warnings over the site's power supply preceded the exit. Reports said the grid officials had told Nscale they did not expect electricity for the data centre until the 2030s, years after its revised 2027 opening, amid long waits for grid connections across Britain. The campus had first been due to switch on by the end of 2026.

To work around the bottleneck, Nscale was reportedly in talks with Bloom Energy, a California supplier of gas-powered fuel cells that run independently of the grid, about generating power on site.

Nscale told Reuters its relationship with Microsoft remained strong and long term, adding that 'this unfortunate London-wide grid issue has no impact on our other contracts.' The firm said it stayed committed to both the Loughton project and the UK, and was exploring alternative power for the site, as well as other expansion sites in the country.

Marquee Backers Step Back

Microsoft is the second major partner from the state-visit package to step back from Nscale's UK plans. OpenAI reportedly paused Stargate UK in April, citing high energy costs and regulatory uncertainty, and did not take up the Nvidia chips it had lined up, though it says it is still exploring the project. Google has since reportedly agreed to take capacity at a separate Nscale site in west London.

The Loughton site had drawn local opposition before Microsoft's exit. The plot, a scaffolding yard, prompted objections from the town council, which flagged local power and water supplies, as well as from residents and local committees.

Epping Forest District Council granted planning permission in the middle of this year, after the investment minister, Lord Stockwood, wrote to the authority's chief executive urging approval, according to planning documents. Officers referenced the letter when they signed off, citing the growing status of data centres as critical national infrastructure.

Nscale, founded in 2024 by chief executive Josh Payne and spun out of the crypto-mining firm Arkon Energy, has grown quickly. Backed by Nvidia, Dell, and Norway's Aker, it was valued at $14.6 billion (£11 billion) in a funding round in March, and brought former Meta executives Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg onto its board this year.

Last month it filed for a US stock market listing, and its prospectus named Microsoft and Anthropic among its expected major customers. Its contracted order book has grown from $100 million (£76 million) to more than $103 billion (around £78 billion) in roughly two and a half years.