Good morning. For the last few years artificial intelligence has been heralded as the technology that will transform economies. Governments have promised billions in investment, datacentres and supercomputers, and a wave of new jobs as AI is “mainlined” into the economy. But what happens when the numbers behind those promises are examined more closely?
That question sits at the centre of a series of recent investigations by the Guardian. The findings were remarkable – not least that the location for a much-trumpeted new supercomputer intended be up and running by year’s end to help fire up the British economy remains a scaffolding yard.
For today’s newsletter I spoke to Aisha Down, a Guardian reporter covering artificial intelligence, about the puzzling aspects of recent deals and announcements in the UK, and what happens when governments eager for growth appear to embrace AI promises faster than they can be verified. But first, the headlines.
Five big stories
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Middle East crisis | Tehran residents say the Iranian capital has endured what they described as its worst night of aerial bombardment, as the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, followed Donald Trump’s suggestion on Monday the war could soon be over with a warning of more strikes to come.
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Environment | Climate breakdown is shrinking the amount of time that people can safely go about their lives, according to a study that shows a third of the world’s population now resides in areas where heat severely limits activity.
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Labour | Plans to curtail the number of jury trials in England and Wales have been described as “unpopular, untested and poorly evidenced” by thousands of lawyers who have written to the prime minister.
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UK economy | UK inflation could end the year higher than previously expected at 3% because of the US-Israel war in Iran, the government’s economics watchdog has warned.
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Travel | Tube drivers in London are to strike across 12 days in the spring in a row over a four-day working week, the RMT has announced.
In depth: ‘A $100bn deal between two of the biggest companies in the world just sort of disappeared’
“What seems to have happened is that the reality has been spun – by a government desperate for growth, and by tech companies with a very strong incentive to maximise AI hype,” Aisha tells me.
She says the reporting began with a simple idea: to check the details behind a wave of enormous AI investment announcements.
“Something [my colleague] Dan Milmo and I on the tech desk had been trying to do towards the end of last year was basically an audit,” she tells me. “2025 was the year of enormous AI deals in the UK, but also all over the world. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang was going around announcing huge AI investments in places like Saudi Arabia and South Korea.”
But things weren’t as straightforward as one might imagine from all the shiny press releases. “We started trying to map out all the deals,” she says – and they began to notice what Aisha describes as an “eerie” pattern.
The $100bn deal that vanished
One moment in particular made Aisha pause.
Earlier this year there had been enormous excitement about a proposed $100bn investment from Nvidia into OpenAI – a deal that would have seen Nvidia provide funding that OpenAI would largely use to buy Nvidia’s own chips.
Then, almost overnight, it appeared to evaporate.
“A $100bn deal between two of the biggest companies in the world just sort of disappeared,” Aisha says. “And markets didn’t really move.”
That raised questions. Financial markets have been known to wobble over far smaller developments – for example, a recent viral Substack post describing a dystopian future scenario with AI as “a feedback loop with no brake” appeared to have caused stock value losses for Uber, American Express, Mastercard and DoorDash, because it specifically mentioned them. Yet when one of the biggest deals underpinning the AI boom appeared to melt away, the reaction was muted.
“I remember wandering around the newsroom probably annoying the editors,” she laughs. “I kept looking at these deals and saying: ‘What money?’”
That moment pushed her and colleagues to start examining the claims behind some of the biggest announcements more closely.
The supercomputer that wasn’t
As the reporting narrowed, two companies kept appearing in the UK government’s AI plans: the datacentre firms CoreWeave and Nscale, both backed by Nvidia and both associated with major promised investments in Britain’s AI infrastructure. One project in particular caught Aisha’s attention: a planned “sovereign AI” supercomputer site in Loughton, on the outskirts of north London.
When she began making calls about the project, some of the answers raised eyebrows. Did the site have power connections? Had construction actually begun? So she went to see it.
“I honestly did not expect what we found,” she says.
Instead of a vast construction site preparing to host one of the country’s most powerful computing centres, the location (pictured above) appeared to still be operating as a scaffolding yard.
“There were trucks going in and out stacked with metal poles,” she says. “We were standing there thinking: this is the right site? This is where the supercomputer is supposed to be?”
The contrast between the futuristic artist’s impressions (pictured top) that had accompanied the announcement and the reality on the ground was striking.
The government and Nscale say this supercomputer is supposed to be up by the end of this year. And while Nscale stated more than a year ago that it had already bought the site, land records seem to show that it is not registered as the owner.
An Nscale spokesperson said: “As a UK-headquarted company, we remain committed to the UK investment we announced – with the Loughton project in support of Microsoft progressing as we envisaged.”
Paper promises
One concern raised by Aisha’s reporting is that some of the grander claims about AI investment may not translate into the economic transformation governments hope for. Predictions about the technology’s impact vary widely. A recent report by the National Foundation for Educational Research suggested that up to 3m lower-skilled jobs in the UK could disappear by 2035 because of automation and AI, even as new roles emerge elsewhere.
Nscale and CoreWeave say much of their investment will come in the form of Nvidia chips installed in UK datacentres and rented to customers. In practice, that could mean Nscale’s $2.5bn “investment” largely involves buying chips made in Taiwan by a US company and leasing them to companies from a UK facility – rather than new money flowing into the economy.
And the infrastructure projects meant to power that AI boom may themselves create far fewer jobs than advertised.
“Datacentres do not, in reality, create hundreds of long-term jobs,” Aisha says. “They create some security jobs, some maintenance jobs – tens at most, usually, not hundreds.”
The companies involved say their announcements accurately reflect their plans and deny that the investments are misleading. They argue that deploying computing equipment in existing facilities and phasing construction are common practices in the fast-moving AI industry. The UK government has also rejected suggestions that its AI strategy rests on exaggerated claims, saying datacentres are essential infrastructure for the country’s economic future.
Nevertheless some of apparent gaps are startling. In January the government said CoreWeave and DataVita would build a Lanarkshire “AI growth zone” powered by up to 1GW of private renewable energy – about the output of a nuclear reactor.
It is not clear whether plans exist for energy infrastructure on that scale. CoreWeave said it was confident there is sufficient power to support the investment, but DataVita, who is responsible for power delivery, did not respond to comment.
‘How it started’ v ‘how it’s going’
When I ask Aisha to boil the story down to its essentials, she explains it using the language of social media memes.
“How it started: billions of pounds of investment, new jobs, datacentres springing up all over the UK, AI being mainlined into the veins of the economy, everything transformed, productivity unlocked, Labour’s growth problem solved.
“How it’s actually going: the money is only money in the loosest possible sense. In many cases it really seems to mean relocating hardware from one place to another, plus some associated electricity and operational costs.
“That is not investment in the way most people would understand the word.”
And as Aisha points out, the UK is far from alone. Governments around the world are competing to attract AI infrastructure and investment – sometimes with similarly ambitious promises attached.
In the end, what was sold as billions pouring into Britain’s AI economy has started to look more like imported chips in borrowed buildings – and a government merrily parroting the press releases of big AI companies, riding on the back of those good vibes, without asking too many difficult questions along the way.
What else we’ve been reading
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Michael Hann interviews Jowe Head about the “serious fun” of being in the very obscure but hugely influential diy-band Swell Maps. Martin
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Marina Hyde on the tone deaf escapades of Kai Trump, the US president’s granddaughter who went viral this week for her video touring a luxury supermarket, is, well, classic Marina Hyde. Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team
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Have a nostalgic wander through some of the hits and misses of Apple’s product line over the years with this Chris Stokel-Walker list. Oh, iPod, I miss you. Martin
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For Moving the Goalposts, our women’s football newsletter (sign up here!), Osasu Obayiuwana covers the outrage over the postponement of the Women’s African Cup of Nations. As one player posted: “It’s actually embarrassing at this point.” Charlie
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The pope has come out against priests using artificial intelligence to write their sermons, but in this opinion piece Margaret Sullivan suggests that journalists may have to learn to live with it. Martin
Sport
Football | Goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky was substituted early in the first half of Tottenham’s humiliating 5-2 defeat at the hands of Atlético Madrid. Meanwhile, Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal equalised from the penalty spot after Harvey Barnes had given Newcastle the lead to make it 1-1 in a hard-fought first leg. Mario Lemina’s early goal for Galatasaray edged them to a 1-0 victory at home to Liverpool in the first leg of their Champions League last 16 tie.
Rugby union | Steve Borthwick has recalled Ollie Chessum to his beleaguered side for their final Six Nations match against France but otherwise stuck by the same underfire players who suffered defeat against Italy.
Football | Joey Barton is due to appear in court charged with attacking a man near a golf club in Liverpool. The former footballer was arrested after the incident outside Huyton and Prescot golf club at 9pm on Sunday.
The front pages
“‘The last stop before hell’: Tehran residents say attacks intensifying,” is the splash on the Guardian today. “US bombers take off from Britain for attack on Iran,” says the Times. “American bombers take off from UK RAF base as Trump vows biggest Iran blitz,” has the i.
“Ban pro-Iran hate march,” is the lead story at the Daily Mail. “Face of UK meets hate with dates,” says the Metro. “Time to stop ‘cruel’ state pension tax grab,” is the splash at the Express. “PM’s leaked ‘assault on devolution’”, writes the National. “Joey Barton held over attack at golf club,” has the Star. “Barton ‘victim blinded’”, says the Sun.
Today in Focus
Should we be boycotting ChatGPT?
Historian Rutger Bregman argues that consumers should boycott OpenAI’s ChatGPT after the company’s deal with the Pentagon. “A lot of people don’t know that their friendly chatbot, ChatGPT, has embedded itself into the authoritarian infrastructure of the Trump administration,” Bregman tells Helen Pidd.
Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Candombe, Uruguay’s Afro-descendent music, was once reviled, marginalised and even banned. But now it is experiencing a peak in popularity.
The music, which is primarily defined by the use of three drums – piano, chico and repique – emerged from the more than 200,000 enslaved Africans sent to Uruguay during 250 years of slavery, most of them from central Africa. Gradually it gained broader acceptance within Uruguayan society, with candombe groups eventually spreading to every region of the country, and in 2009 it was recognised by Unesco as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
Now its rhythmic sounds draw thousands to public squares and carnival parades. The rhythm “is a trance, a spiritual tool”, says Jorge Drexlerl, one of Uruguay’s biggest singers. “In a world in which polarisation is only getting worse, candombe has the ability to build bridges between people”.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
