CoreWave’s first international data centers are now live in the UK

CorewaveA $19 billion cloud computing company that provides AI compute resources to companies has formally opened its first two data centers in the UK – the first outside its domestic US market.

Corewave Opened its European headquarters in London last MayImmediately after hitting that $19 billion valuation Behind the $1.1. billion fund raised. At the same time, the company announced plans to open two data centers in the UK as part of a £1 billion ($1.25 billion) investment. Today’s news A separate announcement from the UK Government which details a five-year investment plan to increase government-owned AI computing capacity, as well as geographic “AI growth zones” that include private sector AI infrastructure.

“This investment is a huge vote of confidence in the UK’s digital technology sector, and one we want to see as we use AI to grow the economy and increase efficiency,” Rachel ReevesUK Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in a statement.

CoreWave’s first UK data center quietly went live in Crawley in October, the company said, with a second hub in London Docklands due to become operational in December. Use both locations Nvidia’s Hopper GPUs (graphical processing units), depending on its upgrade H200 series of chips Designed for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads.

From Crypto to AI Compute

Founded in 2017, CoreWeave started out with a focus on crypto mining, but with the surge in demand for AI compute — that is, the processing power and infrastructure needed to perform computational tasks like running algorithms and executing machine learning models — the company is looking to these GPUs for such workloads. Repurposed infrastructure.

CoreWeave is one of a number of cloud infrastructure startups looking to capitalize on the AI ​​hype wave, including local European players such as France’s FlexAI; DataCrunch, which is Based out of Finland; and Nebius, J., based in the Netherlands came out of the ashes of Russian Internet giant Yandex.

CoreWave said it had opened 28 data centers by the end of 2024, including the two new ones it officially announced today. Separately, it is also planning 10 new data centers by 2025, three of which will be in Europe, including Three previously announced locations In Norway, Sweden and Spain.