Amazon to fuel UK economy with $10.45 billion cloud expansion

Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing unit of Internet giant Amazon.com Inc., said on Wednesday that it plans to spend 8 billion pounds ($10.45 billion) in Britain over the next five years to build, operate and maintain data centres.

The investment project will add up to 14 billion pounds to the country's gross domestic product by the end of 2028 while supporting more than 14,000 jobs at British businesses, according to the company.

The project reflects an acceleration in the pace of Amazon's investment in Britain. Since 2022, AWS has invested £3 billion in facilities in London and Manchester.

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"Our team that builds our data centres globally take into account multiple levers that they have to look at before they can decide where to put data centres...from power to water to the local environment," Tanuja Randery, a managing director at AWS, told Reuters.

She singled out the use of artificial intelligence as among the factors driving demand for cloud services.

The company has invested heavily across Europe this year, announcing a 15.7 billion euro investment in Spain and another 7.8 billion euros in Germany.

Many large corporate customers that had hit the pause button on cloud computing spending last year have started to spend once again, analysts and executives said, with interest in artificial intelligence driving a rebound of growth in the $270 billion cloud infrastructure market.

British finance minister Rachel Reeves, who has been courting foreign investors ahead of an investment summit on Oct. 14, welcomed the investment.

The government said the data centres would be sited to support demand in London and to the west, but Amazon would not disclose their exact locations for security reasons.

"The government is also actively engaged in conversations with the company about investments in other parts of the UK," the finance ministry said.