NEWS
Project Mercury promises the UK’s first pre-trained, sovereign LLMs

James Drayson, Co-Founder & CEO of Locai Labs and Mark Boost, Founder and CEO of Civo, explains how Locai Labs, the UK’s sovereign AI company, and Civo, the British sovereign cloud provider, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to undertake Project Mercury - a programme to build the UK’s first pre-trained, sovereign large language models (LLMs), With the aim of empowering UK enterprises and government with secure, home-grown frontier models designed to drive innovation and accelerate Britain’s AI independence.

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NEWS
Water, not power, the deciding factor for data centre location?

Bill Tesarek, President of Alsay, explains that, as Texas accelerates its position as a hub for AI infrastructure, a less visible constraint is beginning to surface: water availability may become the limiting factor for future growth. While most attention remains on power and grid capacity, operators inside water infrastructure systems are seeing early signals that demand tied to AI is scaling faster than the systems designed to support it.

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Data centre market at the beginning of a new infrastructure cycle

Jake Bush, RLB Head of Supply Chain and Procurement, discusses the findings of the company’s latest data centre trends report, which finds the industry at the beginning of a new infrastructure cycle after a year of recalibration, but success will be determined less by demand and more by the ability to deliver at scale. Jake explains that the future of Europe’s data centre expansion is not dependent on demand, but whether there is the ability to deliver, with structural challenges to the next wave of digital infrastructure including limited access to power, permitting delays and renewed pressure on materials, equipment and specialist labour. 

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Getting to grips with gigawatt facilities and constrained grid capacity

Brad Johnson, Director, Industry Executive for Electric Utilities at Bentley Systems, explains how smart data centre developers are already recognising that real engineering value lives beyond the fence line. Siting decisions, grid interconnection, renewable energy access, road networks, water supply, and substation constraints determine whether a billion-dollar investment performs or fails. Communities hold equal power in that equation - projects are stalling because developers skipped the social license conversation. Happily, as Brad highlights, the engineering intelligence to get this right already exists - the industry needs to use it.

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NEWS
Fuel cells central to Centrica’s power blueprint

Robert Booker, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at Centrica, discusses the company’s ‘Navigating The Energy Labyrinth – the blueprint for power data centres’ report, focusing on the industry’s twin challenges of (steeply) rising power demand and grid constraints/resilience concerns. Robert details the work that Centrica is doing to help data centre owners and operators address this situation, not least via the recently announced infrastructure partnership with Delta Electronics - launching with Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs), licensed by British solid oxide technology leader Ceres, for off-grid energy generation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwRHnLNLByY

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News

Westcon-Comstor appoints Olya Scekaturova to lead sales growth across UK and Ireland.
Scality and OVHcloud partner to deliver a sovereign cloud platform tailored for European digital sovereignty, addressing regulation and AI demands.
Vanquis integrates Freshservice to streamline service operations, marking a development in its digital transformation journey.
Evolve IP's recent session in Rotterdam brought UK and Dutch partners closer to foster collaboration and growth within the tech industry.

Expert Opinions

By Adam Winston, Vice President of Endpoint Security & MDR, WatchGuard
Yael Poliavich’s philanthropic activities, her contribution to educational initiatives through the Yael Foundation, and support for identity-centered learning programs for children worldwide.
Chris Carreiro, Chief Technology Officer at Park Place Technologies, examines how sovereign compute ambitions and accelerating AI adoption are reshaping enterprise infrastructure strategies.
By Elliot Samuels, AVP at DigiCert