OpenAI appears not to have visited proposed UK Stargate site, records show

£20bn of UK AI growth zone investment was hypothetical

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, does not appear to have visited one of the key sites for its multibillion-pound Stargate UK datacentre project, according to government records and sources with knowledge of the process, and £20bn of the £30bn in investment touted by the UK government for the site was hypothetical, The Guardian reported.

The findings relate to the US-UK AI collaboration that was announced during President Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK in September 2025. Stargate UK was to be OpenAI’s biggest undertaking in Britain, described by CEO Sam Altman as reflecting a “shared vision” for UK AI infrastructure, and by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as “a historic chapter in US-United Kingdom technology collaboration.”

A freedom of information request returned to The Guardian showed that neither OpenAI nor its partner Nscale — a UK firm building a supercomputer in Essex — ever met with local authorities at the planned site at Cobalt Park, a business park in North Tyneside. Only Nvidia, the maker of AI chips, appears to have visited the North East combined authority that oversaw the site, doing so in February 2026, five months after the project was announced.

In its press release announcing the “AI growth zone” that would house Stargate UK, the government stated the site was “set to” bring in £30bn in investment. Of that, £10bn was “committed” by Blackstone, which is developing a separate datacentre in the area. The remaining £20bn was described as “potential for an additional £20bn in investment from future partners.”

In response to queries from Spotlight on Corruption, shared with The Guardian, the government said the £20bn figure was given because that was the amount of money the site would need in order to build a datacentre and obtain the computing power necessary to utilise its electricity supply of 1.1GW. In other words, the government suggested the site would attract £20bn because it needed £20bn.

“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.”

Sources with knowledge of the process to set up Stargate UK told The Guardian that the government approached OpenAI and Nscale shortly before Trump’s visit, asking them to agree to develop the site. “They needed a big announcement,” one source said.

John Johnsson, the Conservative leader on North Tyneside Council, said the announcement came as a surprise to local authorities. “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 told The Guardian.

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

Stargate UK was paused in April, with an OpenAI spokesperson citing concerns over regulation and high energy costs. Asked if OpenAI ever visited the site, a spokesperson referred The Guardian to a previous statement: “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.”

A separate freedom of information request to the UK’s National Energy System Operator suggested the site did not have a grid connection. Instead, an alternative power solution was submitted but was redacted in the application returned to The Guardian.

“There’s just not the infrastructure there to be able to actually support it,” Johnsson said. “It’s now looking highly unlikely whether the project is going to come to North Tyneside.” He added that “the fundamentals, energy costs, grid capacity and infrastructure do not appear to have been in place to support a project of this scale.”

“It did have a feeling of: this is too good to be true and then we started to sense quite quickly that perhaps things weren’t as further down the line as anticipated,” he said.

A government spokesperson said: “The government is determined to create the right conditions for investment in the UK’s AI and datacentre infrastructure, and on the delivery of our AI growth zones, with work now well under way in the north-east. A dedicated taskforce co-chaired by the technology secretary and the North East mayor Kim McGuinness is driving forward planning, investment and skills for the region.”

The investigation follows a Guardian report in March that revealed many of the UK deals to “mainline AI into the veins” of the British economy were “phantom investments.”