Brookfield and Qatar's Qai Back AI Data Centre Plan Worth Over £20 Billion at UK's Drax Site

Brookfield estimates that total investment could exceed £20 billion ($26.8 billion), including semiconductors, according to CNBC. The first phase involves an initial investment of £2.5 billion.

Phased Build-Out

The plan begins with up to 100 megawatts of capacity, operational from the first quarter of 2028. A further 500 megawatts would follow between 2028 and 2031, and the longer-term aim is more than 1 gigawatt at the site, though no date has been set for that.

According to Construction Review, the estate has about 4 gigawatts of grid access and 2.6 gigawatts of dispatchable generation capacity. It also has existing cooling systems and is close to the UK fibre network. The first phase will take power from the grid through existing infrastructure. Later phases could be tied more closely to Drax's own generation.

The partners have divided the work. Drax will handle land, power integration and planning. Radiant, which is headquartered in the UK, will lead design, customer engagement and commercialisation. The Brookfield-Qai joint venture will provide investment capital and operating capabilities. Brookfield and Qai announced that $20 billion venture in December 2025, initially to build AI infrastructure in Qatar.

Radiant chief executive Mahdi Yahya said: "This is a unique opportunity for the UK's AI ecosystem to build at scale." He added that building and operating in the UK would give British researchers, startups and enterprises access to frontier compute at home, CNBC reported.

Drax chief executive Will Gardiner said the partnership could help secure the site's long-term future and protect hundreds of jobs, according to Construction Review. Brookfield's head of AI infrastructure, Sikander Rashid, said he expects the project to create direct and indirect jobs across Yorkshire.

Conditions Still Attached

The project is not yet certain. The first phase depends on planning, regulatory and network approvals from the government and relevant agencies, and on finding a tenant. Drax has said that final investment decisions have not been taken.

Investors still welcomed the plan. Drax shares rose 8.8 per cent in early trading on Tuesday, CNBC reported.

Why It Matters

The deal shows Gulf sovereign-backed capital moving beyond regional projects to fund AI compute in Europe, where large data centre projects have been held back by high energy costs and long waits for grid connections. In October, Microsoft reportedly pulled out of a deal to anchor an Nscale data centre near London because of grid connection delays. Nscale said it remained committed to the project and was looking at alternative power sources.

A power station that already has grid capacity and on-site generation addresses the main bottleneck AI developers face in the UK. For Qai, which was set up to build Qatar's AI capabilities, the project adds a large overseas asset through its partnership with one of the world's biggest infrastructure investors. Like rival AI build-outs in the Gulf and the US, though, it depends on Radiant signing anchor customers before construction starts.