AI cloud provider Nebius has signed an agreement to lease high-density data center capacity at Vantage Data Centers' CWL1 campus in Newport, Wales, marking a significant expansion of its UK infrastructure footprint. The deployment will be powered by Nvidia GPUs and built on Nvidia's DSX AI factory reference design, positioning the site to support AI training, inference, agentic AI, and enterprise AI workloads.
The partnership comes at a time when demand for domestic compute capacity in the UK is accelerating rapidly. Nebius, which was formed following the separation of Yandex's Russian and European operations, already maintains a data center presence across the US, the Middle East, and Europe. In addition to owning a facility in Mäntsälä, Finland, the company is currently leasing or in the process of leasing capacity across multiple European markets, including the UK, France, Israel, Iceland, and Finland. In June, Nebius announced plans to invest approximately £1.7 billion ($2.3 billion) to build out capacity across four UK sites, including its live and expanding presence at Ark's Longcross Park and compute deployment at Kao Data's Harlow campus.
Vantage's CWL1 campus has been operational since 2010 and spans three buildings totaling approximately 2 million square feet (186,000 square meters) across a 46-acre site. The facility employs closed-loop cooling that recirculates water rather than evaporating it, along with air-cooled chillers that utilize free cooling during colder months. Vantage acquired the Newport site and its original owner, NGD, in 2020. The campus was developed on the site of a former LG semiconductor plant that had stood vacant for more than a decade. Microsoft Azure is currently a major tenant at the Newport facility.
"This is an important milestone for South Wales and for the UK's AI infrastructure ambitions," said David Howson, president of EMEA at Vantage Data Centers. "Nebius is scaling AI cloud infrastructure in the UK at a time when demand for domestic compute capacity continues to accelerate. Vantage's Newport campus provides the scale, connectivity and operational excellence needed to support that growth, and we're proud to help establish South Wales as a leading destination for AI investment."
"The UK is one of the places where AI is being built, deployed and adopted by startups, enterprises and the public sector," added Gary Tierney, general manager for EMEA at Nebius. "Vantage's Newport campus gives us a strong foundation to expand access to NVIDIA-powered AI infrastructure in the UK and support customers building the next generation of AI applications."
Vantage is actively expanding its footprint across Wales, with ambitions to deploy 1GW of AI-ready capacity across sites in Newport, Bridgend, and Bro Tathan near Cardiff. The company's growth strategy aligns with the UK government's broader push to strengthen domestic AI infrastructure. AI minister Kanishka Narayan underscored the strategic importance of the development: "This government wants to put AI to work as a tool for renewing Britain and delivering new jobs. It is central to our mission to reindustrialize the country, drive good growth in every postcode and ensure our public services match-fit for the decades ahead. Making that happen relies on having cutting-edge compute–the horsepower that makes AI possible–here on home shores. The infrastructure at Newport will create new high skilled jobs in South Wales and help British businesses and innovators using AI to solve some of the toughest problems."
The agreement represents a notable validation of the UK's appeal as a destination for AI infrastructure investment, particularly in regions beyond the traditional London-centric technology hubs. For Nebius, the Newport deployment strengthens its ability to serve customers across Europe with sovereign, high-performance AI compute. The company counts Meta, Microsoft, and AI model firm Reflection among its clients, underscoring the scale and credibility of its cloud platform.