Equinix revealed as occupant of £3.9B UK datacenter campus (www.theregister.com)

Equinix has been revealed as the hyperscaler taking a new 85‑acre datacenter campus near London’s M25, committing about £3.9 billion ($5.1B) to build three facilities totalling more than 250 MW of capacity and roughly 2 million sq ft — making it one of Europe’s largest datacenter projects. Construction is slated to begin around 2027 with operations targeted in the 2029–2030 window to match planned grid connections. Equinix says the site will run on 100% renewable energy and use dry‑cooling to keep water use down to office‑like levels; KPMG estimates up to £3 billion of economic impact during construction and ~£260 million annually when operational. The project is expected to create ~2,500 construction jobs and ~200 permanent roles. For the AI/ML community the campus is significant because 250 MW of capacity can support large-scale GPU clusters for both training and inference, reduce latency for London‑based cloud customers, and increase regional resilience and interconnection options for AI workloads. The move underscores continuing hyperscaler investment in low‑latency, high‑power infrastructure around major cities as cloud and AI demand surges — but it also highlights tradeoffs: grid timing, local employment beyond construction, and environmental scrutiny even as operators promise renewable power and water‑saving cooling. Equinix’s strong recent financials and the UK government’s support frame the build as part of a broader push to underpin national AI ambitions.