The US tech company also announced the opening of a new data centre close to London, designed to help meet growing demand for its AI-powered services like Google Cloud, Search, Maps and Workspace.<\/p>\n
The investment “is a powerful vote of confidence in the United Kingdom (UK) economy and the strength of our partnership with the US,” finance minister Rachel Reeves said in the company’s statement.<\/p>\n
The Alphabet-owned company said the investment is projected to create 8 250 jobs annually at British businesses.<\/p>\n
The announcement will be seen as a boost for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government, which is hoping to attract private investment to grow a sluggish economy and regain momentum in national opinion polls.<\/p>\n
The Trump visit is also expected to deepen economic ties between the two Western allies. Senior US officials have said that economic deals worth over $10 billion would be announced.<\/p>\n
In its statement, Google also said it had agreed on a deal with Shell that would contribute to grid stability and Britain’s energy transition.<\/p>\n
Its Waltham Cross data centre, about an hour’s drive from London, uses air-cooling technology to reduce water usage and is equipped to re-route heat from the centre to then be provided to local homes or businesses, thereby minimising its overall environmental impact, Google said.<\/p>\n
Together with its clean energy initiatives and the Shell partnership, Google said its UK operations are expected to run at or near 95% carbon free energy in 2026.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12780,"template":"default||default","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-12779","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Google said on Tuesday it would make $6.80 billion in new investments into Britain ahead of United States (US) President Donald Trump's state visit to the country, which is expected to feature a flurry of business deals and partnerships.||Google said on Tuesday it would make $6.80 billion in new investments into Britain ahead of United States (US) President Donald Trump's state visit to the country, which is expected to feature a flurry of business deals and partnerships.","published_date":null,"news_description":"","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18216,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/12779\/revisions\/18216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=12779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}