Civo names Hertfordshire as first of 40 planned UK edge data centers
The UK cloud provider is pitching regional AI inference on Nvidia's newest hardware as a sovereign alternative to the hyperscalers, though most of its gigawatt plan rests on sites still to be built
- Early-access pricing for Vera Rubin starts at $10 (£7.55) an hour, according to Civo
- Each Vera Rubin NVL72 rack combines 72 Rubin graphics processors with 36 Vera central processors
- Civo also offers Nvidia B300, B200, H100 and H200 instances
- Civo says heat from its sites can be fed into local district heating networks
Businesses that want AI inference hosted in the UK, close to their users and outside the hyperscalers, gain another domestic option, and regional sites could suit regulated and public sector buyers outside London. Buyers should contract only against the Hertfordshire site until more locations have opening dates and confirm where workloads will actually run while the rest of the network is built. Early-access pricing is worth comparing with existing GPU commitments before switching.
“Compute, cooling and density have to exist physically, in this country, close to the organisations using them.”Mark Boost, chief executive, Civo
Civo announced on 22 September that the first of 40 planned UK edge data centers will be in Hertfordshire. The company says the site will open at 8MW and can grow to 38MW on the same plot, and that fit-out of the building is under way.
Civo says it has secured five more locations totaling 150MW, naming Lancashire, Greater Manchester, London and Oxfordshire, with the remaining sites planned over the next three years. Across the network it is aiming for one gigawatt of liquid-cooled capacity. Those targets are Civo's own, and most of the sites behind them have not been named.
The argument is about inference rather than model training. Civo says AI agents, robots and vehicles need processing close to the device making the request, not in a data center on another continent, and that a distributed network also keeps capacity under British control. Every site is designed for direct-to-chip liquid cooling around Nvidia's Vera Rubin systems, and Civo says it will be among the first UK cloud providers to offer the platform. It said on 22 September that it was already taking orders.
Sources
- Civo, “Civo unveils first of 40 UK edge data centres built to power sovereign AI compute”, press release, 22 September 2026. https://www.civo.com/newsroom/civo-unveils-first-of-40-uk-edge-data-centres
