Wales' AI zone has a neighbour problem
And Microsoft drops Essex project.
Good morning, and happy international G&T day to all who celebrate.
It's three weeks since our scoop that Britain's flagship data centre would have to wait until the 2030s to get enough power and yesterday The Telegraph and FT reported that Microsoft had pulled out as anchor tenant of the scheme. It is a huge blow to Nscale, the neo-cloud company behind the Essex project, ahead of a planned IPO, with investors also getting cold feet last week about cloud providers' debts.
In a similar vein, today's main story comes from South Wales where almost a year ago the government announced an AI Growth Zone. Since then at least two new large data centres have been proposed, but both are about as popular in the region as an England rugby shirt. Reporter Kay Page has been speaking to locals to find out why.
It all points to a paradox I wrote about at the start of August — we've imported US levels of anxiety about data centres, despite not being able to build the things.
Economic growth is Britain’s priority, but it is easy to overlook how much of our economy is built on small businesses.
According to Shopify, UK businesses on its platform generated more than £70 billion of economic activity last year and supported 479,000 jobs. Its data also shows UK exports are booming.
These insights are published on Shopify’s new global data hub, The Entrepreneur Effect.
For anyone working on the growth or tech agenda, it offers a useful look at where jobs are actually coming from.
Happening Today 📆
ID parade: DCMS permanent secretary Susannah Storey and other top civil servants tell the Public Accounts Committee about government plans for digital ID at 3:30pm.
In today's edition:
🏴 A year after an AI Growth Zone was announced in South Wales, residents are pushing back.
🗞️ News publishers accuse Meta of a "land grab" over website scraping
👩💻 The latest job moves and vacancies
