OpenAI’s apparent failure to visit key site raises questions over Stargate UK project

So the UK government and OpenAI are building Stargate UK — a £30bn AI infrastructure project that, upon closer inspection, turns out to be £20bn of 'hypothetical' investment and a key site nobody bothered to visit. The £30bn figure, breathlessly touted by ministers as proof of Britain's tech prowess, apparently included generous dollops of 'potentially' and 'might be' — the investment equivalent of a politician's pre-election promise.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology gamely insists 'this is a landmark investment' and that the project remains on track. Of course it does. Because nothing says 'landmark' like a ten-billion-pound foundation and a twenty-billion-pound question mark. One can almost hear the civil servants sharpening their spreadsheets to recategorise 'hypothetical' as 'anticipated' — a bureaucratic trick that's papered over many a gap between ambition and reality. The real kicker? OpenAI's apparent absence from the site visit suggests either supreme confidence or supreme indifference; neither is especially comforting for a project that's supposed to anchor the UK's AI future.

Still, credit where due: the UK has managed to attract a world-leading AI lab to invest billions — or at least to talk about investing billions while not visiting the building site. If nothing else, it's a masterclass in the ancient art of turning vapour into policy. The real Stargate UK, it seems, is the friends we made along the way — and the invoices that will never be sent.