High-density facility supports Nebius’s deployment of thousands of NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs and forms part of Ark’s £7.5 billion UK expansion roadmap
Ark Data Centres, the UK’s leading data centre developer and operator, has announced a long-term agreement with Nebius (NASDAQ: NBIS), a leading AI infrastructure company, that will see one of the UK’s first deployments of NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs installed at Ark’s Longcross Park campus in Surrey.
The cluster, comprising an initial deployment of 4,000 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs, will enable UK start-ups, research institutes, enterprises and public-sector organisations including the NHS to build AI using the world’s most advanced computer.
The GPU rollout also aligns with the UK government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan goal of expanding Britain’s domestic compute capacity. Beyond the direct boost it gives to UK AI developers and organisations, the infrastructure supplied by Nebius is expected to generate jobs and bring additional investment into the country’s AI sector.
Under the terms of the deal, Nebius will occupy purpose-built, liquid-ready data-hall capacity at Longcross Park. Designed from day one for emerging AI workloads, the campus offers the high-density power, advanced cooling, low-latency connectivity and sustainability features required to host next-generation accelerators.
Andrey Korolenko, Chief Product and Infrastructure Officer at Nebius, said: “Partnering with Ark gives us access to an environment built for the next wave of GPU innovation, with the right infrastructure that is needed to support today’s highly intensive AI cloud workloads. By locating compute resources close to the UK’s world-class start-ups, enterprises, researchers and public-sector innovators, we will enable them to move faster from idea to implementation.”
Powering AI workloads
The new cluster will demonstrate Ark’s ability to power AI workloads – a threshold many legacy sites cannot reach – through a combination of high-efficiency cooling, resilient power and dedicated on-site generation.
Huw Owen, CEO, Ark Data Centres added: “AI clouds need sites that can deliver high density cooling today and scale rapidly tomorrow. Longcross Park was engineered precisely for that challenge and we are delighted to welcome Nebius to the UK as a key AI tenant. This agreement shows that the UK already has the infrastructure to support global innovators and it underlines our commitment to invest £7.5 billion in new, AI-ready capacity across the country to underpin the UK’s AI future.”
Nebius’s first investment in the UK is the latest milestone in its buildout of AI infrastructure to support AI innovation at scale. With the addition of the UK, Nebius will operate seven AI clusters in six countries across Europe, the US and the Middle East, making the company one of the largest independent AI infrastructure builders globally. Nebius’s deployment of thousands of state-of-the-art NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs in the UK is expected to be operational during Q4 2025.