OpenAI backed out of a UK investment pledge that included a commitment to deploy thousands of GPUs at Nscale facilities, and is among the US firms that in September pledged to invest £31 billion (USD 41.6bn) in UK AI projects, including data centres.
OpenAI said at the time that it would lease space in several of the as-yet-unbuilt Nscale data centres, initially “exploring” the uptake of up to 8,000 GPUs, but said that it was now pausing such plans due to high energy costs and unspecified regulatory challenges.
“We continue to explore Stargate UK and will move forward when the right conditions, such as regulation and the cost of energy, enable long-term infrastructure investment,” OpenAI said in a statement.
The UK has some of the highest industrial energy prices in the world. One of Nscale’s data centres was planned for the new ‘AI Growth Zone’ in Cobalt Park in the North East, where the UK government has attempted to accelerate regulatory approval and energy connections.
Stargate has experienced setbacks and delays more broadly, and the company is leaning more heavily on cloud contracts to simplify its compute portfolio and reduce its balance sheet as it prepares for an eventual IPO. OpenAI hired former UK Chancellor George Osborne in December to spearhead its global Stargate data centre expansion.
Meanwhile, in a document that resembles an IPO prospectus, OpenAI said its close ties with Microsoft could be a potential risk to its business, telling investors that the software company is responsible for “a substantial portion of our financing and compute.”
OpenAI included sections titled “Risks Related to the Transaction” and “Risks Related to our Business” in a financial document, viewed by CNBC, that the company shared with prospective investors tied to its recent record financing round.
Recently, OpenAI announced USD 110 billion in funding from strategic partners, including Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank. The company is working with banking partners to tack on an additional USD 10 billion worth of commitments from a broader pool of investors.