Microsoft has terminated its agreement to anchor a planned artificial intelligence data centre in Loughton, Essex, after the site’s expected grid connection slipped into the 2030s, according to reporting first published by The Telegraph and confirmed by Reuters on October 19.
The 50-megawatt campus, being developed by British AI infrastructure company Nscale, was expected to begin operating in early 2027 with 23,040 Nvidia GB300 GPUs supporting Microsoft Azure services in the UK. According to The Guardian, UK Power Networks told Nscale that sufficient power would not be available until the early to mid-2030s.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the decision relates to a single site and that the company remains committed to its partnership with Nscale. Nscale said the relationship remains strong, that the grid issue does not affect its other contracts, and that it is exploring alternative power sources for the site as well as other UK locations.
The bigger picture
Power, not chips, is fast becoming the bottleneck for AI infrastructure. The Financial Times reported that 315 UK data centre projects are waiting for grid connections, representing 73 gigawatts of combined demand. The Loughton project was one of the investments announced during President Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain in September 2025.
Sources: Reuters via Yahoo Finance, Channel Insider, Cloud Computing News.
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