Drax and Brookfield strike investment deal of up to £20bn for data centre

Power generation firm Drax has struck a partnership deal with Brookfield and AI business Radiant to develop a data centre at its North Yorkshire power station.Brookfield said it will initially invest £2.5 billion in the project through its joint venture with Qatar’s Qai, but said total investments could ultimately exceed £20 billion.Late last year, Drax announced proposals to repurpose existing infrastructure at its power station to develop a data centre.On Tuesday, the power business confirmed it had struck the agreement with Brookfield and Radiant, which is backed by Brookfield, to launch the first phase of the data centre project.The group initially hopes to have a roughly 100MW (megawatt) centre operating from the first quarter of 2028, depending on planning and regulatory approvals.It wants to ramp this capacity up to 500MW between 2028 and 2031, and to develop further in the following years.Drax Group chief executive Will Gardiner said: “We are proud to be partnering with leading AI infrastructure providers on this project which can help secure the long-term future of the site and protect hundreds of jobs, maintain a critical source of this country’s energy security, support northern growth and enable us to continue delivering for our local communities.“This country has a unique opportunity to bring together AI leadership, energy infrastructure and industrial renewal to drive national growth.“If constructed in full, this project could become one of the largest data centres in the UK, attracting billions in inward investment, supporting the North’s reindustrialisation and strengthening sovereign AI capability.”Brookfield’s head of AI infrastructure, Sikander Rashid, said: “Teaming up with Drax and Qai for this project represents a major opportunity for our AI infrastructure strategy.Read More“Our capital and deep operating capabilities will help accelerate the construction of a critical piece of sovereign AI, delivered by Radiant, our UK-headquartered compute infrastructure platform.”