Microsoft has withdrawn from Nscale’s planned AI data center in Essex, The Telegraph reported, leaving a site targeted to open in 2027 without its only publicly announced customer.
Reuters, citing The Telegraph, did not identify a reason for the withdrawal and said Microsoft declined to comment. Separately, Nscale was told sufficient power would not be available until the 2030s, The Morning Intelligence reported.
Nscale and Microsoft announced plans in September 2025 for an initial 50 megawatts of AI capacity at the Loughton site, with room to expand to 90 megawatts. Nscale had planned to deliver 23,040 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs in the first quarter of 2027 to support Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. Those were plans announced before Microsoft’s withdrawal.
Microsoft was the project’s only publicly announced customer, The Guardian reported. Its withdrawal also ended plans to fund a supercomputer at the site.
The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) said on July 29 that proposed data centers represented about 73 gigawatts of demand in the national grid connections queue. The regulator proposed fees and project milestones aimed at removing applications unlikely to proceed. Ofgem said speculative projects can delay viable ones and create risks for consumers. UK Power Networks told The Guardian it could not comment on an individual project, but said many data centers await work on the wider transmission network before they can operate.
Nscale’s Glomfjord data center in Norway was six months behind schedule as of Oct. 16. In a Sept. 18 filing for a proposed New York Stock Exchange listing, Nscale reported that $2.6 billion of its $103.4 billion in active and contracted value was active as of Aug. 31. The larger figure covers customer agreements over their terms, rather than sales already recorded.
Nscale told Reuters it remains committed to Loughton. The company is weighing power production at the site while seeking an earlier grid connection, The Morning Intelligence reported.
