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

UK cloud provider Civo plans to build 40 edge datacenters to bring sovereign AI services closer to customers, with the first due to open in Hertfordshire by March 2027. The longer-term target is 1 GW of capacity across the country, with Nvidia Vera Rubin NVL72 systems providing the computing power to run AI applications from UK-owned facilities. The Hertfordshire site is expected to open with 8 MW of capacity and eventually expand to 38 MW. Civo says it has secured five further sites in Lancashire, Greater Manchester, London, and Oxfordshire, which it expects to bring the total to 150 MW within three years. "For the past two years, we've surveyed 1,000 UK IT leaders about AI sovereignty," chief exec Mark Boost said at the firm's Civo Navigate event in London. "Last year, 61 percent said it was a strategic priority, and this year that's risen to 73 percent and that's really not a trend. That's the tipping point." Civo is pitching its UK ownership to customers wary of relying on US-controlled cloud providers. The US CLOUD Act adds to those worries because it allows American authorities to seek data from US companies even when it is stored in datacenters overseas. A recent report found that at least 80 percent of UK businesses using cloud services depend on AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud. "Your data sits in a UK building, but the company is owned and controlled from overseas, so your data is still subject to foreign laws," Boost said. "Sovereignty isn't just where your data sits; it's about who has it and who they answer to. And in these uncertain geopolitical times, there's a growing concern around who holds the digital kill switch." The "kill switch" concern is not entirely theoretical. In June, a US export control directive prompted Anthropic to suspend access to two of its advanced models. The controls were lifted later that month, but the episode showed how abruptly access to a US-hosted AI service could change. Civo also argues that placing capacity closer to customers will reduce the delay between an AI request and its response. Nvidia estimates that inference – running a trained model – accounts for about 35 percent of AI workloads today and could reach 60 to 65 percent by 2030. Civo claims it will be among the first cloud providers in the UK to offer the Vera Rubin platform once its Hertfordshire site is operational. It is taking orders now, alongside existing capacity on Nvidia's older B300, B200, H100, and H200 instances. Early access pricing for Vera Rubin starts at $10 per hour. ®