We’re announcing Stargate UK—an AI infrastructure partnership with NVIDIA and Nscale that strengthens the UK’s sovereign compute capabilities. Stargate UK ensures OpenAI’s world-leading AI models can run on local computing power in the UK, for the UK—particularly for specialist use cases where jurisdiction matters. This will help power the UK’s future economy, boost its global competitiveness and deliver on the country’s national AI Opportunities Action Plan.
The initiative marks a major step forward in the US-UK technology partnership and is the latest rollout of OpenAI for Countries to support governments that want to build out their sovereign AI capabilities. It follows the MoU we signed with the UK Government in July 2025 to explore the UK’s infrastructure priorities and accelerate the adoption of AI.
Nscale is set to significantly expand its planned UK capacity for Stargate UK and the project is expected to be based across a number of sites, including Cobalt Park, which will form part of the newly designated AI Growth Zone in the North East.
OpenAI will explore offtake up to 8,000 GPUs in Q1 2026 with the potential to scale to 31,000 GPUs over time. This sovereign capacity will enable OpenAI’s models to run on local computing power for specialist use cases such as critical public services, regulated industries like finance, research projects or national security partnerships.
NVIDIA will provide access to its most advanced GPUs, ensuring that Stargate UK benefits from the latest generation of AI hardware. Semiconductor designs by leading British chip design company Arm form part of Nvidia’s latest Grace Blackwell series of chips, demonstrating further collaboration between UK and US companies.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said, “The UK has been a longstanding pioneer of AI, and is now home to world-class researchers, millions of ChatGPT users, and a government that quickly recognized the potential of this technology. Stargate UK builds on this foundation to help accelerate scientific breakthroughs, improve productivity, and drive economic growth. This partnership reflects our shared vision that with the right infrastructure in place, AI can expand opportunity for people and businesses across the UK.”
World-class hardware is the foundation—adoption is the other half of the equation and that’s why OpenAI is committed to helping the UK prepare its workforce for the AI era. As part of this, we are bringing the OpenAI Academy—our AI literacy hub that helps people from all backgrounds learn about AI, the available tools, and best practices—to the UK to support the Government’s ambition to upskill 7.5 million workers by 2030.
In partnership with local business leaders we will design flexible and customizable learning experiences to expand access to AI education, which supports job creation and economic growth, whilst also ensuring that regions do not fall behind due to gaps in AI adoption. We will share more on this work with the UK Government in due course.
