The £20 billion investment would turn a biomass power site into one of Europe's largest AI compute hubs, with first operations targeted for early 2028.
Brookfield Asset Management is betting big on British energy infrastructure, announcing a plan to build a gigawatt-scale AI data center at the Drax Power Station estate in North Yorkshire that could attract more than £20 billion, or approximately $26.8 billion, in total investment over its lifetime.
Drax Group confirmed the agreement on Tuesday, saying it has signed a joint development deal with Brookfield and Radiant, Brookfield’s neocloud platform, to co-develop the facility on the Drax site. Drax shares surged more than 8% following the announcement.
What’s actually being built here
The project is structured in phases. The first phase carries an initial outlay of £2.5 billion, or approximately $3.4 billion, targeting 100 megawatts of compute capacity with commercial operations expected to begin in Q1 2028.
Subsequent phases are designed to add another 500 MW between 2028 and 2031, with an ultimate goal of exceeding 1 GW of aggregate capacity across the full buildout.
Funding for the first phase is expected to draw in part on Brookfield’s joint venture with Qatar’s QIA, a partnership established in 2025.
The choice of Drax as the site is not accidental. The power station already comes with 4 GW of grid access and 2.6 GW of dispatchable biomass generation, which means the project sidesteps one of the biggest bottlenecks facing AI data center development across Europe: getting enough reliable power to the site in the first place.
Securing a grid connection in the UK currently takes years. Drax already has one. For a project of this scale, that is less of a detail and more of the entire business case.
What this means for energy, infrastructure, and the AI compute race
Drax’s more than 8% share price jump on the announcement reflects a re-rating of what the company’s physical assets are worth in an AI infrastructure context. A biomass power station that was primarily valued as an energy generator now carries additional optionality as an anchor for one of the largest planned data center investments in European history.
The risks are not trivial. A £20 billion investment phased over multiple years depends on AI demand remaining strong enough to justify 1 GW of compute capacity at a single UK site. The first 100 MW phase, targeted for Q1 2028, is the proof-of-concept moment.
