Bill McDermott, chairman, president and CEO ServiceNow, speaks on CNBC’s Squawk Box at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland on January 17, 2024.
Adam Galic | CNBC
Enterprise software giant ServiceNow and AI-focused startup CoreWeave announced plans to invest billions of dollars in Britain, in a vote of confidence for Prime Minister Keir Starmer in his bid to attract foreign investment.
ServiceNow said it would invest $1.5 billion in Britain over the next five years as it looks to grow its UK business. The US-based company plans to expand its UK presence with new office space and grow its workforce beyond the 1,000 people it currently employs.
ServiceNow also said it would invest the money in localizing data processing for its large language models (LLMs), artificial intelligence models that rely on large amounts of training data to understand and generate text like a human.
The company said it would bring Nvidia GPUs (graphics processing units) to its data centers in London and the Welsh city of Newport to support the processing of data across its LLMs in the UK. This will help support “domain-specific LLMs” for UK clients and governments, ServiceNow said.
Policymakers and regulators in Europe are increasingly calling for so-called AI sovereignty. This refers to the idea that the technologies and data underlying advanced artificial intelligence systems should be stored within Europe and more accurately reflect the culture and history of Europeans.
Cloud computing company CoreWeave, which rents out expensive GPUs to developers looking to train and run large AI models, meanwhile said it would invest £750 million ($978.6 million) to support the UK’s demand for AI infrastructure – the second major investment in the country after In May, a £1 billion commitment was announced.
Meanwhile, two US data center operators also announced plans to invest billions in the British company. One company, CyrusOne, said it plans to increase its investment in the country to £2.5 billion in the coming years, while another, CloudHQ, has committed to developing a new platform. £1.9 billion data center campus in Didcot, Oxfordshire.
In total, cloud infrastructure investment amounts to £6.3 billion, according to the UK government.
“Today’s investment drumbeat is a vote of confidence in Britain and our approach to working with business to deliver sustainable growth for all,” British Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said in a statement on Monday.
Further training programs
ServiceNow said it also plans to offer new skills programs in Britain that will reach 240,000 people.
“The UK is embracing technological transformation on a massive scale. In this new era of AI, the country continues to be a global leader in driving innovation for the benefit of all its communities,” Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, said in a statement on Monday.
“Our investment accelerates the UK’s drive to put AI to work, empower people, enrich experiences and strengthen social connections. Together, ServiceNow and our UK customers are creating a future where technology benefits everyone.”
The announcements were made as part of the International Investment Summit, where British leader Keir Starmer will gather 300 business leaders to encourage foreign investment.
ServiceNow, CoreWeave, CyrusOne and CloudHQ aren’t the only US tech companies betting big on Britain as a global destination for AI innovation. Earlier this year, Salesforce opened its first global AI center in London, a space it uses to facilitate artificial intelligence training and upskilling programs and to foster industry collaboration.
The AI center is part of a $4 billion investment that Salesforce planned to make in Britain in June last year.
