The UK government has chosen Culham Campus, south of Oxford and home to the UK’s Atomic Energy Authority, to be the first of a number of AI Growth Zone (AIGZs) across the country selected for the rapid build-out of data centres, drawing in investment from around the world. Within the region acknowledged by the Government as ‘the home of some of the brightest scientific minds in the world’, the Culham AIGZ will serve a testing ground to drive forward research on how sustainable energy such as fusion can power AI ambitions. 

Tim Bestwick, Deputy CEO, UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), said:

“AI and high-performance computing are central to UKAEA’s mission to lead the delivery of sustainable fusion energy. Culham Campus’s high-capacity and connection to the UK’s national electricity grid, coupled with its available land, positions it as a prime location for deploying substantial computing facilities.’’

Data centre development is speeding up in the region. CloudHQ has recently been confirmed as planning to build a new £1.9bn data centre campus on the site of the former power station at Didcot in south Oxfordshire, where an Amazon Web Services data centre is already located. Successful AI-based companies in the region include TechBio company Exscientia, creator of AI-based space and defence software Oxford Dynamics and autonomous vehicle software success story Oxa.

The University of Oxford is at the forefront of AI research in the UK. Its centres of excellence include the Oxford Robotics Institute and the Remote Applications in Challenging Environments (RACE), based at the Culham Campus, which offers outstanding test facilities to companies from around the world to develop robotics and AI solutions.

Other centres include the Centre of Doctoral Training in Autonomous and Intelligent Machines and Systems, the Oxford Man Institute of Quantitative Finance and the Big Data Institute.

Companies located in Oxfordshire include Canadian robotics pioneer MDA, and Robotics and computer imaging specialists Createc.