The U.K. government is facing a legal challenge from campaigners over its decision to override a local authority and wave through development of a new “hyperscale” data center.
Last year, the local authority of Buckinghamshire, England, denied planning permission for proposals to build a new 90-megawatt data center on green belt land. The green belt is a term in British town planning that refers to an area of open land on which building is restricted.
Data centers, large facilities that house floods of computing systems to enable remote delivery of various IT services, have seen huge demand in recent years amid a global rush to develop powerful new AI systems, such as OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot.
At the same time, they have been met with concerns from environmental campaigners and activists due to the vast amounts of power they require to keep them running on an ongoing basis. AI, in particular, has been criticized for consuming massive amounts of energy.
Plans to develop the Buckinghamshire facility were twice rejected by the council previously. However, they were again resurrected under the Labour government, which is pushing to make the U.K. a global artificial intelligence hub by ramping up national computing capacity.
Buckinghamshire council again rejected the planned data center in June 2024, saying it would be “inappropriate” to develop it on the green belt. Then, last month, British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner granted planning permission for the project, overturning the local authority’s decision.
Campaign groups Foxglove and Global Action Plan announced on Thursday that they filed a formal planning statutory review asking a court to quash Rayner’s approval of the data center, raising concerns over the vast amounts of power and water such facilities require.
“Angela Rayner appears to either not know the difference between a power station that actually produces energy and a substation that just links you to the grid — or simply not care,” Foxglove Co-executive Director Rosa Curling, said in a statement Thursday.
“Either way, thanks to her decision, local people and businesses in Buckinghamshire will soon be competing with a power guzzling-behemoth to keep the lights on, which as we’ve seen in the States, usually means sky-high prices.”
The U.K. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — which Rayner also leads — declined to comment on the legal action when asked about it by CNBC. The government has previously stressed the importance of building data center infrastructure to compete on a global level in AI development.
Thursday’s move comes after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in January announced plans to block campaigners from making repeated legal challenges from so-called “Nimbys” to planning decisions for major infrastructure projects in England and Wales.
Nimby is a derogatory term that refers to people who protest developments they view as unpleasant or hazardous to their local area.
An Nvidia chip is seen through a magnifying glass in Beijing, China, on August 1, 2025.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Nvidia has asked some of its component suppliers to stop production related to its made-for-China H20 general processing units, as Beijing cracks down on the American chip darling, The Information reported Friday.
The directive comes weeks after the Chinese government told local tech companies to stop buying the chips due to alleged security concerns, the report said, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Nvidia reportedly has asked Arizona-based Amkor Technology, which handles the advanced packaging of the company’s H20 chips, and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, which supplies memory for them, to halt production. Samsung and Amkor did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
A separate report from Reuters, citing sources, said that Nvidia had asked Foxconn to suspend work related to the H20s. Foxconn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In response to an inquiry from CNBC, an Nvidia spokesperson said “We constantly manage our supply chain to address market conditions.”
The news further throws the return of the H20s to the China market in doubt, after Washington said it would issue export licenses, allowing the chip’s exports to China — whose shipment had effectively been banned in April.
Last month, the Cyberspace Administration of China had summoned Nvidia regarding national security concerns with the H20s and had asked the company to provide information on the chips.
Beijing has raised concerns that the chips could be have certain tracking technology or “backdoors,” allowing them to be operated remotely. U.S. lawmakers have proposed legislation that would require AI chips under export regulations to be equipped with location-tracking systems to avoid their illegal shipments.
Speaking to reporters in Taiwan on Friday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang acknowledged that China had asked questions about security “backdoors,” and that the company had made it clear they do not exist.
“Hopefully the response that we’ve given to the Chinese government will be sufficient. We’re in discussions with them,” he said, adding that Nvidia had been “surprised” by the queries.
“As you know, [Beijing] requested and urged us to secure licenses for the H20s, for some time and I’ve worked quite hard to help them secure the licenses, and so hopefully this will be resolved,” he said.
Nvidia in a statement on Friday said “The market can use the H20 with confidence.”
It added: “As both governments recognize, the H20 is not a military product or for government infrastructure. China won’t rely on American chips for government operations, just like the U.S. government would not rely on chips from China. However, allowing U.S. chips for beneficial commercial business use is good for everyone.”
Last month, Nvidia had reportedly sent notices to major tech companies and AI developers urging them against the use of the H20s, in what first had appeared as a soft mandate. The Information later reported that Beijing had told some firms, including ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent, to halt orders of the chips altogether, until the completion of a national security review.
It had been seen as a major win for Nvidia when Huang announced last month that the U.S. government would allow sales of the company’s H20 chips to China.
However, the national security scrutiny the H20s are now facing from the Chinese side, highlights the difficulties of navigating Nvidia’s business through increasing tensions and shifting trade policy between Washington and Beijing.
Chip industry analysts have also said Beijing’s actions appear to reinforce its commitment to its own chip self-sufficiency campaigns and its intention to resist the Trump administration’s plan to keep American AI hardware dominant in China.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Sept. 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta has agreed to spend more than $10 billion on Google cloud services, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The agreement spans six years, said the people, who asked not to be named because the terms are confidential. The deal was reported earlier by The Information.
Google is aiming to land big cloud contracts as it chases larger rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in cloud infrastructure. Earlier this year Google won cloud business from OpenAI, which had earlier been deeply dependent on Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure.
Alphabet said in July that the Google Cloud unit, which contains productivity software subscriptions in addition to infrastructure, produced $2.83 billion in operating income on $13.6 billion in revenue during the second quarter. Revenue growth of 32% outpaced expansion of 13.8% for the company as a whole.
Meta’s deal with Google is mainly around artificial intelligence infrastructure, said one of the people. Meta said in its earnings report last month that it expects total expenses for 2025 to come in the range of $114 billion and $118 billion. It’s investing heavily in AI infrastructure and talent, building out its Llama family of models and adding AI across its portfolio of services.
Meta and Google have long been rivals in online ads. But Meta needs all the cloud infrastructure it can access. The company operates data centers and has made commitments to use cloud services from Amazon and Microsoft.
CEO of Workday Carl M. Eschenbach and Ana Eschenbach attend the Allen and Company Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at The Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., July 10, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Workday reported an earnings beat on Thursday, but issued guidance that was inline with estimates and warned of pressure in some areas. The shares slipped in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did relative to LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $2.21 adjusted vs. $2.11 expected
Revenue: $2.35 billion vs. $2.34 billion expected
Revenue increased 13% from a year earlier in the fiscal second quarter, which ended on July 31, according to a statement. The company’s net income rose to $228 million, or 84 cents per share, from $132 million, or 49 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.
For the current quarter, Workday called for $2.24 billion in subscription revenue and $180 million in professional services, which implies $2.42 billion in total revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected a total of $2.42 billion. The company sees an adjusted operating margin of 28.0%, just below the 28.1% consensus among analysts surveyed by StreetAccount.
Workday, which provides software for finance and human resources departments, now sees $8.82 billion in subscription revenue for the full year, and $700 million in professional services revenue, implying a total of $9.52 billion. The LSEG consensus was $9.51 billion.
The part of Workday that works with state and local governments faced challenges during the quarter, CEO Carl Eschenbach said on the earnings call.
“I think we’ll continue to see that as people are trying to figure out what the funding slowdown is going to look like, all the way to the state level,” he said.
Meanwhile, higher education in the U.S. is facing pressure from President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order in March to shut down the Department of Education.
“If it’s a higher ed university that includes a healthcare system, they too are getting a little pullback in funding,” Eschenbach said. “So it’s something we’re keeping our eye on.”
Also on Thursday Workday said it’s acquiring Paradox, a company with conversational artificial intelligence software for recruiting, for undisclosed terms. During the quarter, Workday announced AI agents for extracting accounting details from documents and reporting absent days.
As of Thursday’s market close, Workday shares were down about 12% this year, while the Nasdaq is up about 9%.