OpenAI has temporarily halted construction of its Stargate artificial intelligence (AI) data center in the United Kingdom due to high costs and regulations that are said to be unfriendly to innovation. The project, announced last year at a cost of £31 billion and involving Nvidia and Nscale, was planned to be built in the northeast of the UK and was described as a major step in US-UK technology cooperation while strengthening the UK's ability to develop and control its own AI infrastructure.
Despite the halt, OpenAI is open to continuing it in the future when the situation is more suitable. A UK government spokesman said they are still working with OpenAI to strengthen the country's computing capacity.
The halt to the project comes as OpenAI faces a number of issues about the company's long-term viability. Last month, OpenAI halted Sora after it reportedly cost $15 million a day to operate and generated too little revenue. OpenAI's data center, which has also been plagued by delays with technology partner Oracle, has laid off 30,000 workers to cover the cost of building AI data centers.
