UK AI Minister Criticizes OpenAI for Pausing Stargate Data Center Project

Gate News message, April 17 — Britain's AI minister Kanishka Narayan criticized OpenAI for pausing its Stargate UK data center project, attributing the move to the company's financing pressures and broader investment pullback rather than recent changes in UK energy prices or regulation.

"Since that commitment, there has been no change in energy prices at that site," Narayan said in London. OpenAI previously committed over $1 trillion to AI chips and data centers but is now scaling back investments. Last week, OpenAI cited the need for better conditions on regulation and power costs as reasons for the pause.

Microsoft has agreed to rent capacity at a Norway site originally intended for OpenAI. The Narvik data center campus, planned as a 230-megawatt facility inside the Arctic Circle, will now see Microsoft lease and manage computing capacity through Nscale, a UK-based AI cloud infrastructure provider. The move marks a setback for the UK government's AI investment ambitions.