Technology giant Microsoft walked away from a planned U.K. AI data center run by Nscale, a company spun out of bitcoin mining, after the local grid operator said it may not be able to power the site for a decade.
The site in Loughton, Essex, about 6 miles northeast of London, was meant to house 23,040 Nvidia chips and supply 50 megawatts of computing to Microsoft’s Azure cloud by early 2027, according to the Guardian, which followed initial reporting by the Financial Times. UK Power Networks, which runs the local grid, told Nscale there may not be enough capacity until the early-to-mid 2030s.
Nscale announced the project last year alongside Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI. When the Guardian visited in February, the site was still a working scaffolding yard. Nscale has since cleared the location and is looking at other ways to bring in power. It said its other Microsoft contracts remain in place.
Nscale grew out of Arkon Energy, which built sites for bitcoin mining. Its founder, Josh Payne, took that experience in locking down land and power and turned it into a business selling computing to AI companies. Much of the listed mining industry is now running that playbook.
When CoinDesk looked at the industry shift in March , public miners had announced more than $70 billion in AI and high-performance computing contracts. They had also cut their combined bitcoin holdings by more than 15,000 BTC from their peaks, partly by selling coins to pay for the buildout.
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