AWS To Invest £8 Billion In UK, Amid Cloud AI Expansion

Amazon is to make a huge AWS investment in the United Kingdom over the next five weeks, in a welcome piece of news for the Labour government.

On Wednesday it was announced that “Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to invest £8 billion over the next five years (2024-2028) building, operating, and maintaining data centres in the UK.”

The investment comes amid a surge in data centre demand amid the AI boom. In March AWS said it would establish an infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia, and in May AWS was in talks with Italy to invest billions of euros to expand its business in the country amidst broader expansion plans in Europe.

AWS investment

This latest AWS investment in the UK comes after AWS in March 2022 said it would invest “more than £1.8 billion in the next two years building and operating data centres in the UK in order to meet the growing needs of our customers and to help strengthen the UK’s digital infrastructure.”

AWS had opened its new London region in the United Kingdom back in December 2016, and the 2022 investment more than doubled its investment in the region since that 2016 launch (it apparently invested up to £3 billion between 2020 and 2023).

Now fast forward to 2024, and AWS said its £8 billion investment over the next five years (2024-2028) is part of the company’s long-term commitment to supporting growth and productivity across the country, and is estimated to contribute £14 billion to the UK’s total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) through to 2028, and support an average of more than 14,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs on an annual basis at local UK businesses.

These positions all form part of the AWS data centre supply chain, ranging from construction, facility maintenance, engineering, telecommunications, and other jobs within the broader local economy.

Of course, the government was delighted at the new.

“This £8 billion Amazon Web Services investment marks the start of the economic revival and shows Britain is a place to do business,” said Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves. “I welcome the announcement as part of the Government’s mission to boost growth, unlock investment and make every part of Britain better off.”

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“Today’s announcement reflects the growing strength of the UK’s digital economy with a key player like Amazon Web Services committing to growing and expanding on our shores,” added technology secretary, Peter Kyle. “From increasing compute power to providing access to AI – it is vital that innovators have the infrastructure they need to grow our digital economy and drive breakthroughs.”

“The next few years could be among the most pivotal for the UK’s digital and economic future, as organisations of all sizes across the country increasingly embrace technologies like cloud computing and AI to help them accelerate innovation, increase productivity, and compete on the global stage,” said Tanuja Randery, VP and MD, Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) at AWS.

“We’re proud to announce our plans to invest £8 billion in digital and AI infrastructure over the next five years to help meet the growing needs of our customers and partners, and support the transformation of the UK’s digital economy,” said Randery.

Other UK investments

AWS is not the only big tech and cloud service provider investing in the UK.

In November 2023 under the then Conservative government, Microsoft made its single largest investment in its forty-year history in the UK.

Microsoft said it would spend £2.5 billion over the next three years to expand its next generation AI data centre infrastructure, more than doubling its data centre footprint in the UK and training more than one million people for the AI economy.

In January 2024 Alphabet’s Google said it would a make a further $1 billion (£790m) investment to build a new data centre, just north of London.

That data centre will be constructed on a 33-acre site acquired by Google back in 2020. The town of Waltham Cross is located roughly 15 miles of London.

AWS however has said it will not reveal the locations of its new UK data centres for security reasons.