Microsoft has announced plans to invest US$30 billion (A$45 billion) in the United Kingdom by 2028, as the company builds upon its artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The deal comes as United States President Donald Trump touched down in the UK for his second state visit to Britain.
The Microsoft deal will include an additional $15.5 billion in capital expansion and $15.1 billion in its U.K. operations.
The company said the investment would allow it to build the UK’s largest supercomputer, with more than 23,000 advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) in partnership with British cloud computing firm Nscale.
“You don’t spend £22 billion unless you have confidence in where the country, the Government and the market are all going,” Microsoft president Brad Smith said.
“And this reflects that level of confidence.”
This comes after Smith previously criticised the UK over its attempt in 2023 to block the tech giant’s US$69 billion acquisition of video game developer Activision Blizzard, which was cleared later that year.
Tech giants Nvidia, Google, OpenAI and Salesforce also announced plans for an investment worth over US$40 billion in total.
Nvidia announced a US$15 billion investment in UK partner Nscale and U.S. infrastructure provider CoreWeave.
The AI chip company said as part of the investment pact, it would deploy 120,000 Blackwell GPU chips in the U.K., the largest ever deployment in Europe.
“This will truly make the UK an AI maker, not an AI taker,” David Hogan, Nvidia’s head of enterprise sales for the Europe region, said in a call with reporters ahead of the announcement.
Google also announced a $6.8 billion investment in U.K. AI development, which would include the opening of a new state-of-the-art data centre in Waltham Cross, which is projected to create 8,250 jobs.
Salesforce has boosted its commitment from $4 billion in 2023 to $6 billion.
“We are doubling down on our long-standing commitment to the UK with this significant investment,” said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
