Ed Ludlow

And OpenAI said it is pausing its Stargate AI infrastructure project in the U.K., citing regulation and the cost of energy.

Now, the company said they will continue to explore Stargate U.K.

and move forward when the right conditions enable the long-term infrastructure investment, Ed.

Okay, let's stick with this story and bring in Bloomberg tech editor Shona Ghosh out of London.

And, you know, what's the reporting here?

Like, let's get into the reasons why they're doing the pause and I guess also a sense of the scale that Stargate had hoped to achieve in the U.K.

?

Yeah, I mean, firstly, it's a little hard to say exactly why.

The reasons given by OpenAI was the high cost of energy in the UK, which is true.

It's one of the most expensive companies for energy costs in Europe.

So that's certainly one reason that may be causing delays to the plans.

And the other reason, you know, without much further definition was regulation.

That might be around...

you know, the difficulties of getting planning permission, et cetera, to get, say, data center infrastructure up and running.

So Stargate, as your viewers probably know, is OpenAI's large, many multiples of billions of dollars

project to build data center infrastructure all over the world, beginning with the U.S.

It's got the first data center camper in the U.S., but expanding internationally, so the U.K., Norway, and other regions as well.

But it's sounding like this U.K.

project is on hold.

I mean, that cannot be great news for Keir Starmer and the government in terms of growth.