Just days after ‘pausing’ Stargate in the UK, OpenAI buys a podcast to better explain its thinking while CNBC notes the AIco is tempering spending plans as a potential IPO looms
OpenAI has backed out of renting up to half the compute capacity at Nscale’s planned Stargate Norway AI factory in Narvik. CNBC reported that instead Microsoft will rent the compute capacity and OpenAI might rent some of that capacity from Microsoft at sometime in the future. The article comments, “OpenAI has moved to temper expectations of its spending plans as a potential IPO looms this year”.
Last week OpenAI ‘paused’ its agreement with Nscale in what had been hailed as a landmark investment in the UK’s AI future, Stargate. The US firm, which developed ChatGPT, blamed high energy costs and regulation.
An OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC, “We are moving ahead with our plans in Norway,” adding “Microsoft is an important partner in our network and we will work with them to access compute in Norway just as we already do in other parts of the world.”
The spokesperson referred CNBC to the announcement last October that OpenAI had contracted to spend $250 billion on services from Azure, Microsoft’s cloudco division. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019.
OpenAI posed then paused in the UK
Stargate UK was a part of the UK-US AI deal announced last September, in which US companies committed to invest £31 billion to the UK’s tech sector after President Donald Trump’s controversial state visit to the UK last year. He was accompanied by the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Jensen Huang, CEO of the world’s biggest AI chip maker and most valuable company.
This tranche of commitments were part of a larger series of investments intended to “mainline AI” into the British economy as a major driver of growth.
The Guardian newspaper stated, “A Guardian investigation last month revealed many of the deals to “mainline AI into the veins” of the British economy were “phantom investments”, and a supercomputer scheduled to go live in 2026 was last month still a scaffolding yard in Essex. That supercomputer was to be built by Nscale, a UK firm that had never built a datacentre before but said it was aiming to deliver the project in 2027. Nscale was also to build key datacentres for Stargate UK.”
An OpenAI spokesperson said: “We see huge potential for the UK’s AI future, and we support the government’s ambition to be an AI leader. We continue to explore Stargate UK.” According to the the AI giant, it is just waiting for the right conditions to make the long-term infrastructure investment in the UK.
Given the current geopolitical turmoil, it’s very hard to say when that might be. However, in a show of intent, OpenAI opened its first permanent London office yesterday – note the qualifier.
One commentator on Reddit said, “Data centers are halting expansion everywhere, it’s a good thing this isn’t being built because the economics of these AI companies doesn’t actually make sense.”
OpenAI launched The Stargate Project in January 2025, initially to develop compute resources for AI in the US.
As an aside…
OpenAI said it will acquire TBPN (for Technology Business Programming Network), a technology-focused talk show popular in Silicon Valley, for “low hundreds of millions of dollars”. TBPN employs 11 people. This is why, according to Fidji Simo, CEO, AGI Deployment at OpenAI: “As I’ve been thinking about the future of how we communicate at OpenAI, one thing that’s become clear is that the standard communications playbook just doesn’t apply to us.”
She continued, “I can’t wait to leverage their [TBPN’s] talent outside of the show to innovate on how we bring AI to the world in a way that helps people understand the full impact of this technology on their daily lives.” But don’t worry, “TBPN will continue to run their programming, choose their guests, and make their own editorial decisions. That’s foundational to their credibility, and it’s something we’re explicitly protecting as part of this agreement,” Simo promises.
