OpenAI pauses Stargate UK as energy costs and copyright rules block the path

OpenAI has paused its Stargate UK data centre project, originally announced in September 2025 as a partnership with Nvidia and Nscale to deploy up to 31,000 GPUs in north-east England. Two primary obstacles drove the decision: UK industrial electricity prices are more than four times higher than in the US, and grid connection queues stretch three to eight years. Additionally, the UK's unresolved AI copyright framework — where a broad text and data mining exception was rejected by creative industries — creates legal jurisdiction risk for OpenAI's training operations. The pause also aligns with OpenAI's pre-IPO capital discipline ahead of an expected public offering in Q4 2026. The US Stargate programme continues unaffected, backed by SoftBank's $40 billion bridge loan.