Those kindly philanthropists at Amazon Web Services (AWS) plan to invest £8 billion ($10.4 billion) on datacenters in Britain between now and 2028, a move welcomed by the UK’s finance minister who tried to take credit and spin it as part of the country’s economic revival.
The cloud giant said the £8 billion investment in building, operating, and maintaining bit barns is a token of its long-term commitment to supporting growth and productivity across the nation.
AWS claims that its efforts will contribute £14 billion ($18.3 billion) to the UK’s economy over the same time period through to 2028, and support an average of more than 14,000 jobs via its datacenter supply chain, ranging from construction to facility maintenance, engineering, and telecoms.
Tanuja Randery, AWS VP and MD for EMEA, dramatically claimed that the next few years could be pivotal for the UK’s digital and economic future as businesses adopt technologies like cloud computing and AI in a bid to grow productivity and compete on the global stage.
“We’re proud to announce our plans to invest £8 billion in digital and AI infrastructure over the next five years to help meet the growing needs of our customers and partners, and support the transformation of the UK’s digital economy,” she said.
Commenting on the news, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “This £8 billion investment marks the start of the economic revival and shows Britain is a place to do business,” adding that she plans to create jobs, unlock investment, and make every part of Britain better off.
Yet it isn’t all selfless giving on the part of the cloud giant. As The Register reported last year, AWS expanded its revenues in Britain by 30.1 percent to £3.78 billion ($4.9 billion), and also collected 76 percent more direct public sector revenue from the UK government during the preceding financial year.
In December last year, it was also revealed that AWS had scored a contract for cloud hosting services for the UK Home Office worth nearly half a billion pounds (£450,281,369 or about $590 million).
At the same time, the company has been criticized for being less than transparent about its tax arrangements, with AWS UK revenues reported as part of Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL.
The Guardian newspaper also reported last year that the cloud giant’s parent, Amazon, paid no corporation tax for the second year in a row after benefiting from tax credits on its investment in infrastructure.
Meanwhile, AWS is one of the global cloud giants under investigation by the UK’s competition watchdog to assess whether it engages in anti-competitive practices that may limit customer choice in the cloud market.
Despite this, it was revealed in June that the Competition and Markets Authority itself is to double the amount it spends with AWS on cloud services over the next 36 months, even while the investigation is ongoing.
Mark Boost, CEO of UK cloud operator Civo and an outspoken critic of the cloud giants, was scathing of the £8 billion investment, saying: “Expensive datacenter infrastructure and AI hardware… are not made and sold by UK companies.”
“Britain’s datacenter innovators deserve a fair chance to play their part in the country’s digital future, without a national overreliance on hyperscalers purely because of the scale they can offer,” Boost added. ®