OpenAI Never Visited the Site — The £30 Billion Stargate UK Was a Press Release

OpenAI’s Stargate UK was supposed to be the biggest AI infrastructure undertaking in British history — a £30 billion datacentre project at Cobalt Park, North Tyneside, announced with fanfare during Donald Trump’s state visit to London last September. According to a Guardian investigation published July 4, OpenAI never visited the site, its partner Nscale never met the local authority, and £20 billion of the “potential” investment appears to have been entirely invented.

🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE: The UK government told North Tyneside that £30 billion was coming. A freedom of information request now shows that £20 billion of that figure was hypothetical — the amount the site needed, not the amount anyone had committed. The project was paused in April. Nobody has broken ground. The whole thing may have been a press release with a grid connection that didn’t exist.

What the FoI Actually Reveals

The Guardian filed freedom of information requests with the North East combined authority, which oversees the Cobalt Park site. The results:

OpenAI never met the local authority. No record of any visit, meeting, or coordination exists.
Nscale, the UK firm paired with OpenAI to develop the site, also never formally met with the authority. An Nscale spokesperson said their chief commercial officer “went to North Tyneside” but could not confirm he met anyone there — and there is no record of him doing so.
Only Nvidia visited, and not until February 2026 — five months after the Trump-Starmer announcement.

The government designated Cobalt Park an “AI growth zone” during Trump’s visit. The press release said the zone was “set to” bring in £30 billion in investment. Of that, £10 billion was “committed” by Blackstone for a separate, adjacent datacentre that appears to still be going ahead. The remaining £20 billion was described as “potential for an additional £20bn in investment from future partners.”

When the campaign group Spotlight on Corruption asked the government how that £20 billion figure was calculated, the answer was: the site would need £20 billion to build a datacentre and obtain computing power for its 1.1GW electricity supply. In other words, the government said the site would attract £20 billion because the site would need £20 billion.

“It is disingenuous for the government to imply that the £20bn for the AI growth zone will be forthcoming, when it reflects the amount needed,” said Kamila Kingstone, a senior campaigner at Spotlight on Corruption. “It will give false hope to communities that eye-watering amounts of money are on the way to boost the local economy when the reality might be very different.”

The Grid Connection That Wasn’t There

A separate FoI request to the UK’s National Energy System Operator revealed that the Cobalt Park site did not have a grid connection. The project submitted an alternative power solution — which was redacted in the documents returned to the Guardian.

John Johnsson, the Conservative leader in North Tyneside, said the announcement caught local authorities completely off guard: “When it was announced, we were really, really taken aback. We were surprised because we weren’t made aware of any of these discussions. All of a sudden, there’s all of this pizazz and these great big things announced.”

He added: “The fundamentals, energy costs, grid capacity and infrastructure do not appear to have been in place to support a project of this scale. It’s really disappointing. It did have a feeling of: this is too good to be true.”

This echoes the Guardian’s March investigation, which revealed that many of the UK government’s AI investment announcements were “phantom investments” — deals that existed on paper but had no committed capital behind them.

What OpenAI and Nscale Say

OpenAI declined to directly address whether it had visited the site. A spokesperson referred the Guardian to the company’s previous statement from April, when it pulled out of Stargate UK: “We see huge potential for the UK’s AI future … We continue to explore Stargate UK and will move forward when the right conditions such as regulation and the cost of energy enable long-term infrastructure investment.”

An Nscale spokesperson said their chief commercial officer had gone to North Tyneside but did not clarify if they had met anyone there.

A source with knowledge of the process told the Guardian: “Nscale were pretty much told to back the Stargate project, and it caught them completely unaware. It was never really a thing. It was effectively just a government PR stunt, and [OpenAI chief executive Sam] Altman took the hit when the plug got pulled.”

Sam Altman described the project as reflecting OpenAI’s “shared vision” for the UK’s investment in AI infrastructure. Jensen Huang called it “a historic chapter in US-United Kingdom technology collaboration.” Neither statement appears to have been backed by a site visit.

The Pattern: AI Investment as Political Theatre

This is not an isolated incident. The Stargate UK pattern — announce big numbers, generate a photo op, then quietly walk away — is becoming the defining characteristic of government AI strategy across multiple countries. The US Stargate project promised $500 billion. The UK version promised £30 billion. Neither has produced a functioning datacentre at the announced site.

The common thread is that AI infrastructure announcements serve a political function before they serve a technical one. They signal ambition, create headlines, and generate diplomatic goodwill — particularly in the context of US-UK “technology partnership” optics. The actual engineering (grid capacity, land acquisition, environmental permits, energy costs) comes later, if at all.

When OpenAI pulled out in April citing “regulation and high energy costs,” the framing was that the UK’s policy environment was hostile to investment. The FoI evidence suggests a different reading: the project was never far enough along for regulation or energy costs to be the deciding factor. There was no site visit, no grid connection, and no committed capital beyond Blackstone’s separate investment.

NZ Angle

New Zealand is currently debating its own AI infrastructure strategy, with the NZ Super Fund’s potential role in building sovereign AI capacity under active discussion. The Stargate UK lesson is directly relevant: if a country with the UK’s resources and OpenAI’s direct involvement can end up with a phantom investment, the risk for smaller economies is proportionally greater. The NZ government should treat any AI infrastructure announcement that includes the word “potential” in the investment figure with the same scrutiny Spotlight on Corruption applied to the £20 billion hypothetical.

The sovereign AI debate has been framed as a question of whether countries need their own AI infrastructure. The Stargate UK collapse suggests the harder question is whether the companies promising to build it are serious — or whether the announcement itself was the product.

❓ FAQ

Was any real money committed to Stargate UK? Yes — £10 billion from Blackstone for a separate datacentre at the same business park. That project appears to still be going ahead. The £20 billion attributed to OpenAI’s Stargate UK was described as “potential” and appears to have been hypothetical.

Did OpenAI ever visit the site? There is no record of OpenAI meeting with the local authority at Cobalt Park. Nscale’s chief commercial officer reportedly visited North Tyneside but there is no record of him meeting anyone from the authority. Only Nvidia visited, five months after the announcement.

Why did the project pause? OpenAI cited “regulation and high energy costs” when it pulled out in April. However, the FoI evidence suggests the project was never far enough along for those to be the actual blockers — there was no grid connection at the site.

Is this the same as the US Stargate project? No. The US Stargate project, announced in January 2025, promised $500 billion in AI infrastructure investment from OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank. The UK version was a separate, smaller announcement tied to Trump’s state visit. Neither has produced a functioning datacentre at the originally announced site.

What does this mean for other countries’ AI investment announcements? The Guardian’s investigation suggests that AI infrastructure announcements can serve a political function — generating headlines and diplomatic goodwill — before the technical groundwork is done. Countries should scrutinise any investment figure described as “potential” rather than “committed.”

🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE

The UK government announced £30 billion of AI investment for North Tyneside. A freedom of information investigation now shows that £20 billion of that was invented — the amount the site needed, not the amount anyone had promised to spend. OpenAI never visited. Nscale never met the local authority. There was no grid connection. The project was paused in April, and the most likely explanation is that it was a press release dressed up as an infrastructure programme — a pattern that is repeating across multiple countries as governments compete to signal AI ambition without doing the engineering groundwork.