NEWS
Databricks announces $ 850m UK investment to expand AI and data capabilities
Databricks has announced an $ 850 million investment in the United Kingdom over the next three years, significantly expanding its footprint and accelerating enterprise adoption of data and AI. The company will quadruple its London office space with a new 137000 square foot headquarters in Fitzrovia, establishing a central EMEA hub to support customers, partners and innovation.
The expansion will support rising demand for Lakebase, Databricks’ serverless Postgres database designed for AI agents, and Genie, its conversational AI assistant that enables employees to query data and receive trusted insights instantly.
Databricks plans to double its UK and Ireland workforce from more than 500 employees to over 1000, strengthening engineering, research and customer success capabilities.
The new headquarters will include an executive briefing center for training, collaboration and customer engagement, while supporting regional engineering hubs in Amsterdam, Berlin and Belgrade. Databricks already serves more than half of FTSE 100 companies including Unilever, Rolls Royce and Nationwide.
Alongside infrastructure growth, Databricks aims to train 100,000 people across the UK and Ireland in data and AI skills by 2028 through university partnerships and free platform access.
Leadership says the investment reflects confidence in the UK as a leading AI hub and will help organisations scale faster, innovate responsibly and unlock the full value of data driven intelligence.
This initiative also reinforces collaboration with public sector organisations and startups, ensuring broader ecosystem impact and long term economic growth across the region while positioning London as a global centre for responsible AI development and innovation leadership.
Ericsson expands UK 5G reach with major Virgin Media O2 RAN deal
Ericsson has secured a major five year extension with Virgin Media O2 that will see it become the primary radio access network partner across the UK. The agreement forms a central pillar of the operator’ s Mobile Transformation Plan and is expected to generate several hundred million euros in revenue over the term.
The upgrade will significantly expand Ericsson’ s RAN footprint while enabling faster and more reliable mobile connectivity nationwide. It will leverage programmable 5G Standalone technology alongside advanced multiband radios and AI driven analytics to improve efficiency and performance.
New infrastructure including Massive MIMO radios and intelligent software will optimize network performance in real time while reducing energy consumption. Programmability will also unlock network slicing for enterprise applications and industry use cases.
The partnership builds on a long standing relationship and supports future evolution toward Cloud RAN and 5G Advanced. It also underpins continued investment in capacity coverage and
reliability across urban rural and transport corridors ensuring customers benefit from consistent high quality connectivity wherever they are in the UK.
The initiative will further enhance service resilience at high demand locations such as stadiums stations and city centers while extending coverage along roads railways and coastal communities previously underserved by mobile infrastructure investments across the country today and beyond.
Virgin Media O2’ s growing traffic demands have more than doubled in five years making network modernization essential. The deployment will maximize newly acquired midband spectrum and support wider 5G SA coverage already reaching most of the population.
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