A U.S. technology giant stated that Google will invest $1 billion US dollars to develop a data center just outside of London, the United Kingdom. This is the company's latest investment in Britain, which comes as the demand for internet services in the country continues to expand. The data center will be situated in the town of Waltham Cross, around 15 miles north of central London, on a 33-acre (13-hectare) land that Google purchased in 2020, the Alphabet-owned (GOOGL.O) new tab firm said in an official statement.
The British government, which has been pressuring companies to contribute to the financing of new infrastructure, especially in developing sectors like technology and artificial intelligence, hailed Google's commitment as a "huge vote of confidence" in the UK.
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, stated in a Google statement that the UK is a center of technological expertise with enormous development potential, as seen by Google's $1 billion investment.
The investment comes after Google spent $1 billion to buy an office block in central London in 2022, close to Covent Garden, and another site in neighboring King's Cross, where it is also constructing a new office and based its artificial intelligence subsidiary DeepMind.
It also occurs just a few weeks after Microsoft (MSFT.O) disclosed plans to invest 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) in Britain over the course of three years, including expanding the capacity of its data centers to support AI services in the future.
Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat stated in the release, "This new data center 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."
Google, which has more than 7,000 employees in the UK, added that the waste heat from the data center presents a chance for energy saving that will help the neighborhood.
