By William Foxley
Publication Date: 2026-10-19 15:04:00
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has terminated its agreement to anchor Nscale’s planned AI data center in Loughton, Essex, after interconnection delays pushed the site’s expected power supply into the 2030s. The Telegraph first reported the withdrawal on Sunday, and Microsoft confirmed on Monday that the decision covers a single site.
The Loughton campus was designed to deliver 50 MW of AI compute for Azure in the UK, scalable to 90 MW. Nscale’s September 2025 announcement called for an initial 23,040 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs in the first quarter of 2027, and the company pledged £2 billion to the build. Microsoft was the project’s anchor tenant and its only publicly announced customer.
“We remain committed to our partnership with Nscale, including work to build robust digital infrastructure and support AI growth globally. This decision relates to a single site,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement carried by City AM.
