Welcome to our latest round-up of news from the technology and hosting world. Here’s what we’ve discovered this month.
New AI Data Centre
A proposed AI data centre campus at Elsham Wolds in Lincolnshire could create up to 1,000 local jobs when completed. The planned 435-acre site could house as many as 15 individual data centre buildings, as well as a greenhouse complex and sustainable energy centre. The design also includes a gym, shop, creche and café. Local businesses, meanwhile, are expected to benefit from improved digital resilience and lower latency due to their proximity to the major fibre network.
The campus, which is expected to take 10 years to build, would cost between £5.5bn and £9bn, excluding IT equipment, and create around 3,500 construction jobs. The on-site energy centre would produce almost 50MW of electricity a year, helping to reduce the campus’s carbon footprint, while the greenhouse complex would reuse heat from the data centre’s cooling equipment to grow agricultural produce. The greenhouse could produce over 4,700 tonnes of tomatoes a year and support up to 64 jobs.
UK Robotaxi
Uber has announced it will start trialling driverless taxis in London next spring, ahead of its original 2027 timeline. The trial will be conducted in partnership with London-based Wayve, a company that specialises in AI-powered autonomous driving technology and which has already tested self-driving cars under human supervision on UK roads.
Recent changes to UK laws mean autonomous taxis can now legally operate without a human safety driver, provided they meet strict safety and mapping standards. Uber’s London pilot is set to be one of the first large-scale uses of Level 4 autonomy in Europe, highlighting the rapid progress of commercial self-driving services in urban areas. Uber, however, has already launched a robotaxi service in Texas, while Tesla plans to do the same this month.
While this is a major step forward for autonomous vehicles in the UK, the country lags behind others. Driverless cars are already operating in China, Singapore, the UAE and the US.
AI Apprenticeships
Multiverse, a UK upskilling platform for technology and AI adoption, is to provide 15,000 new AI apprenticeships across the country over the next two years. Supporting the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, the rollout will see a huge increase from the 2,200 apprenticeships currently in place at over 200 companies.
The inclusive programme will cater for workers of all ages and career levels, with placements being offered at companies such as Skanska, Visa, Capita and Legal & General, which have all joined the initiative. Skanska already has its first 25 AI apprentices in place.
Wishing to provide an alternative pathway to a degree, Multiverse’s apprenticeship modules include a broad range of subjects, such as ethics, prompt engineering, data governance and the implementation of machine-learning models.
While AI could add an estimated £79.3 billion to the UK economy by 2035, current skills shortages are holding back progress. It is hoped the 15,000 apprenticeships, which are funded by the Growth and Skills Levy, will help address this issue.
Cloud Spending Up
Global spending on cloud infrastructure services hit £67.4bn in Q1 2025, showing a 21% growth compared to the previous year. Analysts believe the rise is mainly due to businesses boosting cloud capacity as they deploy AI workloads on a larger scale.
The top three providers, AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, continue to dominate the market, making up 65% of global cloud spending. However, while Azure and Google Cloud both saw growth exceeding 30%, AWS’s increase was only 17%.
One of the biggest considerations for businesses when choosing a provider is the ongoing cost of AI inference, the process where trained AI models are used to make predictions or decisions on new, unseen data. This has led major providers to invest in their own AI chips, like AWS’s Trainium and Google’s TPUs, that improve efficiency and reduce costs.
Due to the growth in AI, cloud spending is expected to remain strong throughout 2025. However, businesses will focus on cost-efficient inference and platform optimisation to ensure their AI projects remain within budgets.
Digital NHS
The NHS is to receive up to £10bn of government funding over the next four years for digital transformation. Representing an almost 50% increase in current spending, the funding aims to modernise Britain’s outdated health system through improvements to the NHS App, the ‘single patient record’, the Federated Data Platform, and expanded AI services. Benefits will also come from wearable monitoring devices and voice transcription tools.
The digital transformation is part of the NHS’s ten-year reform strategy, which aims to transition care from hospitals to community settings, integrate technological services, and adopt prevention-oriented models.
Seen as the most ambitious reform of the NHS since its inception in 1948, the strategy aims to?improve productivity, decrease waiting times and promote sustainable care delivery across the service. However, some critics have estimated that the digital transformation may cost as much as £21 billion, significantly more than the government funding allocated so far.
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