London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Oct 03, 2025

Nvidia pledges to build Britain’s largest supercomputer following $40 billion bid for Arm

Nvidia pledges to build Britain’s largest supercomputer following $40 billion bid for Arm

U.S. chipmaker Nvidia pledged Monday to build a £40 million ($52 million) supercomputer in Cambridge, England, weeks after announcing it intends to buy British rival Arm for $40 billion.

U.S. chipmaker Nvidia pledged Monday to build a £40 million ($52 million) supercomputer in Cambridge, England, weeks after announcing it intends to buy British rival Arm for $40 billion.

The supercomputer — named “Cambridge-1” and intended for artificial intelligence (AI) research in health care — is being unveiled by Nvidia founder and Chief Executive Jensen Huang at the company’s GTC 2020 conference on Monday.

“Tackling the world’s most pressing challenges in health care requires massively powerful computing resources to harness the capabilities of AI,” Huang will say in his keynote. “The Cambridge-1 supercomputer will serve as a hub of innovation for the U.K., and further the groundbreaking work being done by the nation’s researchers in critical healthcare and drug discovery.”

Expected to launch by the end of the year, the Cambridge-1 machine will be the 29th most powerful computer in the world and the most powerful in Britain, Nvidia said.

Researchers at GSK, AstraZeneca, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS (National Health Service) Foundation Trust, King’s College London and Oxford Nanopore will be able to use the supercomputer to try to solve medical challenges, including those presented by the coronavirus.

“There are scientists that need a state-of-the-art computer and we are going to build one,” said Nvidia Vice President of Healthcare Kimberly Powell on a press call ahead of the announcement, adding that they’ll be able to do “large-scale research” that they otherwise “wouldn’t be able to do.”

Nvidia said Cambridge-1 will have 400 petaflops of “AI performance” and that it will rank in the top three most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world. A petaflop is a measure of a computer’s processing speed.

Matt Hancock, Britain’s health minister, said “accelerating drug discovery has never been so important” and that the investment can “make a real difference.”

“Nvidia’s new supercomputer will aid the U.K.’s best and brightest to undertake research that will save lives,” said Hancock in a statement.

The supercomputer, which can be set up in a matter of weeks, will be powered by 80 Nvidia systems that are connected together.

Asked if Nvidia expects to generate any revenue from Cambridge-1, Powell told CNBC that Cambridge-1 is “not a commercial endeavor.”

A.I. overhyped?

AI has so-far played a relatively minor role in tackling the pandemic. While there have been some successful niche applications, the likes of DeepMind, OpenAI, Facebook AI Research, and Microsoft, which have their own supercomputers, have remained relatively quiet as the coronavirus has spread around the world.

“This (pandemic) is showing what bulls--t most AI hype is,” said Neil Lawrence, the former director of machine learning at Amazon Cambridge, back in April.

“It’s great and it will be useful one day but it’s not surprising in a pandemic that we fall back on tried and tested techniques.”

Cambridge-1 isn’t the only supercomputer Nvidia plans to build in Cambridge.

When the Arm acquisition was announced on Sept. 13, Huang said Nvidia would set up a new Arm-based supercomputer at a yet to be established AI research center in the city.

Academics at the heart of the Cambridge tech scene questioned Nvidia’s commitment to the center last week, saying the lack of communication between Nvidia and the university was odd.

Powell said Cambridge-1 is “completely independent” of Arm, adding: “This is Nvidia building an AI supercomputer for our health care research.”

Nvidia’s Arm acquisition isn’t without its critics and it could still be blocked by either the U.K. government or the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which is responsible for regulating competition in the U.K. Last week, two tech investors told CNBC that they think the deal will be blocked by someone.

The U.K.’s opposition Labour party has said an Arm takeover is not in the public interest and criticized the ruling Conservative Party for failing to protect the British chip designer.

On Sept. 21, Labour lawmaker Daniel Zeichner, member of parliament for Cambridge, called on the government to place clear conditions on the takeover of Arm. He wants legal guarantees on jobs, Arm’s Cambridge headquarters, and its business model. Zeichner also said it’s important to ensure the U.K.’s tech sovereignty is defended.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
Nvidia Pledges Up to $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI to Power Massive AI Data Center Build-Out
U.S. Signals ‘Large and Forceful’ Support for Argentina Amid Market Turmoil
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
×