New AI Growth Zone for the North East

The government has announced the creation of an AI Growth Zone in the North East, set to generate more than 5,000 new jobs and attract up to £30 billion in private investment.

The NE AI Growth Zone is set to unlock more than 5,000 new jobs and bring in £30 billion in investment as the region becomes a hub for AI development.

This will build on the region’s work to upskill local residents in AI and create opportunities for people to take up long term careers in the sector – including the technology’s development and use of AI in public services like healthcare.

Announced today [17 September], it will solidify the region’s ambition to become one of the largest data centre hubs anywhere in Europe – made up of sites in Blyth and Cobalt Park near Newcastle – helping to boost economic growth and create new high skilled jobs, putting more money in people’s pockets. 

By boosting the rollout of AI in the area, this new AI Growth Zone will: 

• Create thousands of jobs across the region, including in construction through to data engineering, AI research and development, and AI safety
• Put newly trained AI experts from local universities including Newcastle University, Durham University, Sunderland University and Northumbria University, within touching distance of the UK’s newest emerging tech hub
• Drive local economic growth and increase productivity of businesses in sectors including manufacturing, healthcare, energy and finance by enabling them to more easily adopt AI and compete globally
• See new breakthroughs in our understanding of drug discovery, climate change and safer technology by giving researchers, scientists, start ups and academics access to AI power

The AI Growth Zone will generate growth opportunities across the region, capitalising on access to the UK’s largest source of low carbon and renewable energy, world class universities and the regions emerging tech ecosystem in areas including advanced manufacturing, robotics and space. 

Blackstone has already committed £10 billion into the Blyth site – with the new designation of an AI Growth Zone providing the potential for an additional £20 billion in investment from future partners. 

Separate from the Blackstone investment, British firm Nscale, and leading American companies OpenAI and NVIDIA partner up to establish Stargate UK to deliver new AI infrastructure in the UK, developing a platform designed to deploy OpenAI’s technology on sovereign infrastructure in the UK. 

The first phase will see OpenAI take up to 8,000 GPUs – computer chips which are the building blocks of AI technology, able to carry out a huge number of calculations in a split second – to support AI adoption across the UK early next year, with the possibility to expand to approximately 31,000 GPUs overtime.

Stargate UK is expected be based across a number of sites in the UK, including in Cobalt Park, which will form part of the newly designated AI Growth Zone in the North East. 

The partnership between these firms will help boost AI infrastructure and adoption in the UK – transforming public services and growing the economy to support the government’s Plan for Change. It comes as Prime Minister and President Trump ink a new deal to unlock investment and collaboration in AI, Quantum, and Nuclear technologies – driving economic growth and boosting jobs. 

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said:    

This is great news for the North East and the people who live there. This investment will create thousands of high-quality jobs, boost skills and inspire the creation of new firms.

The North East’s industrial legacy is evolving into a future of innovation – unlocking a potential £30 billion and powering communities with the skills and careers to lead the UK’s next industrial revolution.

North East Mayor Kim McGuinness said:

Today’s announcement of an AI Growth Zone places the North East at the forefront of the next technology revolution and will lead to billions of pounds of new investment in our region, thousands of better jobs and new opportunities for local people.

I want kids in school here today to see their place in an AI-driven future. We know AI will be transformative for our economy, but this is how we make sure it also provides a new future for our young people, by working with business to create training and apprenticeship routes into this fast growing sector on a whole new scale.

Our region boasts computing power that are among the best in Europe with Cobalt Park Data Centres already established in Wallsend and the QTS Cambois Data Centre Campus in Blyth due to open in 2028. We have the skills and brainpower in our tech sector and universities, and now we can match that with the new investment this Growth Zone will bring to the North East from around the world.