North East England AI Growth Zone (Cobalt Park & Blyth)
Blackstone (via QTS) at Blyth; Stargate UK (OpenAI, Nvidia, Nscale) at Cobalt Park
UK's second AI Growth Zone, designated 18 September 2025, anchored at Cobalt Park (North Tyneside) and Blyth (Northumberland). Stargate UK -- a joint venture between OpenAI, Nvidia and British firm Nscale -- will deploy sovereign AI compute at Cobalt Park, starting with 8,000 GPUs scaling to 31,000. Blackstone has committed GBP 10bn to the Blyth site via its QTS subsidiary, with the AI Growth Zone designation creating headroom for a further GBP 20bn from other partners.
Project detail
- Operator / developer
- Blackstone (via QTS) at Blyth; Stargate UK (OpenAI, Nvidia, Nscale) at Cobalt Park
- Location
- Wallsend & Blyth, North East, United Kingdom
- Status
- Approved
- AI relevance
- High — AI/compute led
- Announced
- 2025-09-18
- Target live date
- Not published
- Published capacity
- 1,100 MW — Reported capacity, definition not publishedA megawatt figure was reported but the source does not define what it measures, so it is excluded from every total.
- Floor area
- Not published
- Stated investment
- £30,000,000,000
- Power
- Combined energy capacity target of 1.1GW within six years across the zone. Cobalt Park hosts the existing Stellium colocation campus (currently up to 80MW, scaling toward 180MW); Blyth hosts a new Blackstone/QTS hyperscale build.
- Grid connection
- Not published
- Cooling
- Not published
- Water
- Not published
- Planning authority
- Not published
- Planning reference
- Not published
- Planning decision
- Not published
- Decision date
- Not published
- Construction start
- Not published
- Expected completion
- Not published
- Operational since
- Not published
- Confidence
- High confidence
- Last verified
- Not published
Key facts
Jobs
More than 5,000 (government estimate)
Stargate UK
OpenAI/Nvidia/Nscale sovereign AI compute deployment at Cobalt Park, phase one up to 8,000 GPUs, scaling to ~31,000
Blyth investment
GBP 10bn committed by Blackstone via QTS, with GBP 20bn further potential
Sources
- US-UK tech deal agreed as AI Growth Zone announced for north east of England
Secondary source · DatacenterDynamics · 18 September 2025
- North East England set for billions in investment and thousands of jobs through new AI Growth Zone
Secondary source · UK Government / North East Combined Authority · 18 September 2025
Entry last updated 22/09/2026. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
North East in context
See every tracked project in North East, the capacity that has been disclosed there and how it connects to wider UK demand.