Google to invest $1 billion in UK data centre

Google has started building a new data centre in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. The data centre will be located on a 33-acre site that Google purchased in October 2020 and, once complete, will help ensure reliable digital services to Google Cloud customers and Google users in the UK. The new data centre represents an investment of $1 billion dollars in the country.

Google’s data centres help power popular digital services—like Google Cloud, Workspace (which includes Gmail, Docs, Sheets and more), Search and Maps—for people and organisations worldwide. Google's continued investment in technical infrastructure, including its data centres, plays a critical role in supporting the company's artificial intelligence (AI) innovations and growing cloud needs in the UK.

“People and organisations worldwide rely on Google’s data centres daily for the digital services they use,” said Ruth Porat, President & Chief Investment Officer, Chief Financial Officer of Alphabet and Google. “The Waltham Cross data centre represents our latest investment in the UK and the wider digital economy at large. This investment builds upon our Saint Giles and Kings Cross office developments, our multi-year research collaboration agreement with the University of Cambridge, and the Grace Hopper subsea cable that connects the UK with the United States and Spain. This new data centre will help meet growing demand for our AI and cloud services and bring crucial compute capacity to businesses across the UK while creating construction and technical jobs for the local community. Together with the UK government, we are working to make AI more helpful and accessible for people and organisations across the country.”