Civo plots 40 edge datacenters to power Britain's sovereign AI

UK cloud provider Civo is set to construct 40 edge datacenters across the country to support sovereign AI services closer to customers, with the inaugural site slated for opening in Hertfordshire by March 2027. The ultimate aim is to achieve 1 GW of capacity nationwide, with Nvidia's Vera Rubin NVL72 systems delivering the computational power to execute AI applications from UK-based facilities.

The Hertfordshire location is projected to commence operations with 8 MW of capacity, expanding gradually to 38 MW. Civo has already secured five additional sites in Lancashire, Greater Manchester, London, and Oxfordshire, which, when completed, will amount to a total of 150 MW within three years.

Civo's CEO, Mark Boost, emphasized during the firm's Civo Navigate event in London that during the past two years, they have conducted a survey of 1,000 UK IT leaders regarding AI sovereignty. The findings revealed that last year, 61% of respondents considered it a strategic priority, which has since increased to 73% this year. Boost highlighted that this trend is not merely a fleeting interest but a significant shift in priorities.

The company is leveraging its UK ownership to attract customers who are wary of relying on US-controlled cloud providers. The US CLOUD Act has exacerbated these concerns, as it empowers American authorities to request data from US companies, even if it is stored in foreign datacenters. A recent report indicates that approximately 80% of UK businesses utilizing cloud services depend on AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud.

Boost clarified that while the data may reside within a UK building, it is still subject to foreign laws due to the ownership and control of the company being situated overseas.

Sovereignty, according to Boost, extends beyond the physical location of data storage; it encompasses who possesses the data and who holds the authority over it. In the current geopolitical climate, there is an increasing apprehension regarding who controls the digital kill switch. This concern is not merely theoretical; in June, a US export control directive compelled Anthropic to suspend access to two of its advanced AI models.

Although the restrictions were eventually lifted, the episode underscored the abrupt potential changes in access to US-hosted AI services.

Civo contends that positioning capacity closer to customers will diminish the latency between an AI request and its response. Nvidia estimates that inference - the process of running a trained model - constitutes around 35% of AI workloads today and could surge to 60-65% by 2030. Civo asserts that it will be among the pioneering cloud providers in the UK to offer the Vera Rubin platform once its Hertfordshire site becomes operational. Early access pricing for the Vera Rubin platform begins at $10 per hour.