The British government is committed to building an AI superpower and has attracted massive investment. US data center operator CoreWeave announced an investment of 1 billion pounds to build two new GPU data centers in the UK, located in Crawley and London Dock, in partnership with Digital Realty and Global Switch. This move marks CoreWeave’s further expansion in the British market and also demonstrates the potential and attractiveness of the UK’s development in the field of AI. These data centers will be equipped with Nvidia H200 accelerators. Although they are not the latest Blackwell chips, they can still support the running of large AI models and meet the growing AI computing needs.
With the British government releasing the AI Opportunities Action Plan, promising to increase productivity by 1.5% per year through AI and expected to create 47 billion pounds of economic benefits, CoreWeave's investment comes at the right time. However, the resulting energy pressure is also worthy of attention. CoreWeave plans to launch 10 more data centers by the end of 2025, and its global layout also demonstrates its ambitious development strategy. Currently, CoreWeave operates 28 data centers around the world.
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Mike Matakola, chief commercial officer at CoreWeave, said: "The UK is an important market for CoreWeave, where we have our European headquarters and plan to expand further in the future. We are delighted to be working with Digital Realty and Global Switch to provide UK provides next-generation AI infrastructure.” However, despite the completion of new facilities, Nvidia’s latest chips are not yet in use. These new data centers are equipped with H200 accelerators based on Nvidia's older Hopper architecture, and Nvidia's latest Blackwell chips are not expected to be available until the fourth quarter of 2024.
The H200 is one of Nvidia's most advanced GPUs in the Hopper generation, equipped with up to 141GB of HBM3e high-speed memory, with 4.8TB per second of memory bandwidth and nearly 4 petaFLOPS of sparse FP8 performance. According to CoreWeave, with more than 1TB of high-speed memory configurations per server, these data centers are better able to support the growing number of cutting-edge AI models.
For example, a single H200 system can now run Meta's latest Llama3.1405B model with full 16-bit precision, whereas running the model previously required spreading it across two nodes or using 8-bit quantization to run on an H100 system. While CoreWeave has not disclosed the exact number of GPUs in its Crawley and London Dock data centers, its past deployments have typically involved more than 10,000 accelerators.
The two data centers are the latest in a massive expansion by CoreWeave over the past two years, reflecting its ambitions to enter new markets. In the spring of last year, CoreWeave announced that it would make London its European headquarters and make an initial investment of 1 billion pounds. Subsequently, at the International Investment Summit, the company’s investment amount was increased to 1.75 billion pounds (approximately 2.1 billion U.S. dollars).
During this wave of AI craze, CoreWeave has received billions of dollars in venture capital and debt financing, and plans to launch 10 more data centers by the end of 2025. Currently, CoreWeave operates 28 data centers worldwide.
At the same time, the British government is also stepping up its plans to become an AI superpower. Recently, the country released an AI Opportunity Action Plan, committing to adopt 50 recommendations from venture capitalists with a view to increasing productivity by 1.5% per year through AI. This strategy is expected to create 47 billion pounds (approximately US$57 billion) per year. Economic benefits. Despite ambitious targets, National Grid's chief executive has warned that supporting additional AI infrastructure could put pressure on the grid.
Highlight:
CoreWeave invests £1 billion in new GPU data centers in Crawley and London Docks, UK.
The new facility is equipped with Nvidia H200 accelerators and does not yet use the latest Blackwell chips.
The British government plans to use AI to improve productivity and create economic benefits of 47 billion pounds per year.
CoreWeave’s huge investment in the UK, as well as the British government’s active promotion of AI development, jointly outline a blueprint for the vigorous development of the UK AI industry. However, while enjoying the dividends of AI, we also need to pay attention to potential challenges such as energy supply to ensure sustainable development.