European AI infrastructure company Nebius says it has struck deals with a number of early-stage UK AI labs as it looks to accelerate its compute and infrastructure offering in the UK.

Nebius, which is sometimes referred to as a neocloud, builds and operates data centres, packing them with GPUs, then offers access to these data centres to AI and enterprise companies needing compute power, as well as offering them specialised software to run AI applications.

Earlier this year, Nebius announced a £1.7bn UK build-out across new sites, along wtth an expansion of its London hub, which is its major European R&D and go-to-market hub.

Nebius, which is headquartered in Amsterdam and has bagged multi-billion-dollar contracts with Meta and Microsoft to supply them with AI infrastructure, has four data centre sites in the UK. Nebius, which has also struck compute deals with Revolut and Prima Mente, also has its own data centres in Finland and France.

Nebius general manager, EMEA, Gary Tierney, said Nebius wanted to “continue to look to expand” in the UK, referencing its talent density. He said: “We are working with some really exciting AI labs that are coming out of the UK.”

Tierney did not provide specific details on which UK AI labs it was working with but said they were in stealth or just came out of stealth.

London-based AI lab Ineffable Intelligence, founded by former DeepMind bigwig David Silver; Inherent, founded by former DeepMind, Microsoft and White House staff; and Recursive Superintelligence, co-founded by high-profile German computer scientiest Richard Socher, are examples of UK AI startups coming out of stealth this year.

Ineffable Intelligence has struck a deal Google Cloud to be its preferred cloud partner.

Asked more broadly about the public backlash against data centres in the UK, Tierney said: “I don’t think that is ever a reason for us not to invest in a region” pointing to its investmetnt in the UK.

Seperately, Tierney said he was pleased the UK government was planning to ease restrictive non-compete clauses in workers' employment contracts.

He added: “It’s not necessarily been a problem for us. But we service the startup market. And when you look at that non-compete not existing in the US, you see the statup market is moving way quicker.

“Here, now with so much great talent appearing and being able to raise funds but they can’t attract talent in London, because of this non-compete, if that goes away, I think you are going to see an emergence of a lot more labs, a lot more frontier builders here in the UK.”