CommonAI selects Kao Data to host the UK's Scaling Inference Lab - providing a national testbed for next-generation AI infrastructure. As part of the agreement, CommonAI will deploy at least five, high-density AI clusters at Kao Data's Harlow campus - giving UK startups access to high-density rack-scale infrastructure to develop emerging AI technologies. Kao Data, the specialist developer and operator of data centres engineered for AI and advanced computing, has been chosen by CommonAI to host its pioneering, AI Scaling Inference Lab at its data centre campus in Harlow. Funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) and delivered by CommonAI, the lab provides a neutral environment where emerging AI technologies are put to the test and benchmarked against commercial systems - prioritising rapid iteration, open collaboration and long-term sustainability. CommonAI chose Kao Data because of its industry-leading sustainability and energy efficiency credentials, its reputation as the UK's premier destination for high-density AI and supercomputing workloads, and its advantageous location between UK's cutting-edge, AI start-up communities based in London and Cambridge. Under the agreement, CommonAI will deploy a series of high-density, GPU-accelerated AI clusters within two dedicated technology suites. Each cluster tests a distinct approach to AI infrastructure including pipeline parallelism, heterogeneous orchestration and nanosecond optical circuit switching, with all five clusters aiming to become operational by early 2027. Oct 23, 2026 Prev Next 1 of 43,793 The deployment combines a deliberately diverse mix of GPUs and accelerators, including NVIDIA HGX B300 systems built on its Blackwell Ultra architecture, NVIDIA H200 NVL and RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs, and AMD Instinct MI350X accelerators - all of which are housed within Supermicro, MSI, Fujitsu PRIMERGY and Dell PowerEdge servers and powered by 100% certified renewable energy. "Kao Data's Harlow campus is perfectly situated between London and Cambridge, two of the UK's most important AI hubs, making it the ideal home for the Scaling Inference Lab," said David Stringer, Partnerships Lead, Scaling Inference Lab at CommonAI. "With advanced levels of security and a distinctive design, the campus provides us with a solid environment to welcome startups, investors and policymakers into the lab, and provides UK innovators with a neutral place to prove their technologies at rack scale - strengthening and supporting the Government's wider AI ambitions." "Kao Data has a long heritage of hosting some of the UK's most advanced AI and supercomputing workloads, and we are proud to become home to the Scaling Inference Lab," said Spencer Lamb, Chief Executive Officer at Kao Data. "The work taking place at our Harlow campus will help shape the next generation of UK AI, ensuring the country remains a leader in AI development while meeting the growing demand for sovereign, homegrown AI infrastructure and the resources needed to support the country's world-leading startup community." ARIA launched the Scaling Inference Lab earlier this year with a £50 million commitment and in June the UK Government announced more than £20 million in additional funding to establish a world-class national capability for new AI compute systems. As such, the Scaling Inference Lab will build a experimental clusters on a 6-month cadence, offering superfast access to shared, high-performance infrastructure resources so that innovative startups can plug their technologies into complete rack-scale systems and test them against the latest emerging workloads. [To share your insights with AiThority, please write to [email protected]]

CommonAI selects Kao Data to host the UK's Scaling Inference Lab - providing a national testbed for next-generation AI infrastructure. Oct 21, 2026, 08:28 ET As part of the agreement, CommonAI will deploy at least five, high-density AI clusters at Kao Data's Harlow campus - giving UK startups access to high-density rack-scale infrastructure to develop emerging AI technologies. LONDON, Oct. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Kao Data, the specialist developer and operator of data centres engineered for AI and advanced computing, has been chosen by CommonAI to host its pioneering, AI Scaling Inference Lab at its data centre campus in Harlow. Funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) and delivered by CommonAI, the lab provides a neutral environment where emerging AI technologies are put to the test and benchmarked against commercial systems - prioritising rapid iteration, open collaboration and long-term sustainability. CommonAI chose Kao Data because of its industry-leading sustainability and energy efficiency credentials, its reputation as the UK's premier destination for high-density AI and supercomputing workloads, and its advantageous location between UK's cutting-edge, AI start-up communities based in London and Cambridge. Under the agreement, CommonAI will deploy a series of high-density, GPU-accelerated AI clusters within two dedicated technology suites. Each cluster tests a distinct approach to AI infrastructure including pipeline parallelism, heterogeneous orchestration and nanosecond optical circuit switching, with all five clusters aiming to become operational by early 2027. The deployment combines a deliberately diverse mix of GPUs and accelerators, including NVIDIA HGX B300 systems built on its Blackwell Ultra architecture, NVIDIA H200 NVL and RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs, and AMD Instinct MI350X accelerators - all of which are housed within Supermicro, MSI, Fujitsu PRIMERGY and Dell PowerEdge servers and powered by 100% certified renewable energy. "Kao Data's Harlow campus is perfectly situated between London and Cambridge, two of the UK's most important AI hubs, making it the ideal home for the Scaling Inference Lab," said David Stringer, Partnerships Lead, Scaling Inference Lab at CommonAI. "With advanced levels of security and a distinctive design, the campus provides us with a solid environment to welcome startups, investors and policymakers into the lab, and provides UK innovators with a neutral place to prove their technologies at rack scale - strengthening and supporting the Government's wider AI ambitions." "Kao Data has a long heritage of hosting some of the UK's most advanced AI and supercomputing workloads, and we are proud to become home to the Scaling Inference Lab," said Spencer Lamb, Chief Executive Officer at Kao Data. "The work taking place at our Harlow campus will help shape the next generation of UK AI, ensuring the country remains a leader in AI development while meeting the growing demand for sovereign, homegrown AI infrastructure and the resources needed to support the country's world-leading startup community." ARIA launched the Scaling Inference Lab earlier this year with a £50 million commitment and in June the UK Government announced more than £20 million in additional funding to establish a world-class national capability for new AI compute systems. As such, the Scaling Inference Lab will build a experimental clusters on a 6-month cadence, offering superfast access to shared, high-performance infrastructure resources so that innovative startups can plug their technologies into complete rack-scale systems and test them against the latest emerging workloads. The Scaling Inference Lab's technology partners include Quettaflop AI, Callosum and Oriole Networks, with further partners to be announced. To learn more about the lab and the hypotheses being tested, visit scalinginference.org. About Kao Data Kao Data leads the industry, pioneering the development and operation of UK and European data centres engineered for AI and advanced computing. With hyperscale-inspired facilities east and west of London, and northern England's largest data centre planned for Greater Manchester, we are home to technology's most demanding computing infrastructure. Its award-winning, NVIDIA DGX-Ready certified data centres are designed, engineered, and operated by one of the industry's most respected teams. Together, this provides colocation customers deploying mission-critical AI, enterprise, and cloud workloads with a secure, scalable, and sustainable compute environment, backed by a guarantee of 100% uptime. Kao Data's data centre portfolio includes more than 237 MW of IT load, either currently operational, under development or planned - all of which is under-pinned by the highest energy efficiency, sustainability and ESG credentials. Backed by leading international investors, and with several pioneering 'industry firsts' to our name, Kao Data represents the future in industrial scale, high-capacity data centres for AI and the next generation of compute. About CommonAI C.I.C. CommonAI CIC is a non-profit membership organisation dedicated to collaborative engineering for the safe and responsible development of foundational AI technologies. It builds shared infrastructure that organisations can use to run and improve AI systems in real-world conditions, with sovereignty, certainty and efficiency. About the Scaling Inference Lab Funded by ARIA and delivered by CommonAI, the Scaling Inference Lab is a neutral environment where emerging AI technologies are tested at rack scale alongside commercial systems. Building a new experimental cluster every six months, the lab gives startups shared infrastructure to validate their technologies, and provides governments and investors with data-driven insights to guide future AI infrastructure decisions. SOURCE Kao Data

Meet Bruce Claassen, Kao Data's new Chief Financial Officer. October 07, 2026 Bruce Claassen, formerly of Global Switch, has joined Kao Data as Chief Financial Officer to scale the company's ambitious data centre builds across the UK Specialist developer and operator of AI and advanced compute data centres Kao Data has announced the appointment of Bruce Claassen as its Chief Financial Officer. With more than 20 years of experience leading financial operations across multinational businesses such as Global Switch and Adenza, Bruce offers a strong track record in capital investment, refinancing and building high-performing finance teams. He will work directly with Kao Data's CEO Spencer Lamb and the senior leadership team to scale the business in support of its plans. Bruce tells Data Centre Magazine: "What drew me to Kao Data was the vision and ambition of the management team, and the energy and commitment they bring to delivering it. "That is backed by the strength of the platform and the clarity over its current pipeline." Harlow: an AI-ready campus. Bruce joins the company at a time of buoyant growth across the UK, partnering closely with the Kao Data Board and investors while developments progress in Stockport, Greater Manchester and Park Royal alongside the company's award-winning AI-ready campus in Harlow, Essex. The Harlow campus, a multi-megawatt data centre development in the UK Innovation Corridor, is engineered specifically for high-density AI and HPC workloads. With Kao Data's ambition to expand the campus to potentially 150MW, significant upfront capital and financial strategy are required. With Bruce's experience in securing and structuring large-scale capital investments, Kao Data aims to successfully fund its extensive development pipeline and solidify its position as a premier provider of AI-ready infrastructure. My priority is making sure its financial strategy helps enable that ambition, creating the capacity and flexibility to deliver the current plan Bruce Claassen, CFO of Kao Data Commenting on this ambition, Spencer Lamb, CEO of Kao Data, says: "Data Centre Magazine is delighted to welcome him to Kao Data as CFO. "His combination of digital infrastructure expertise, financial leadership and private equity experience makes him an excellent fit as we continue to accelerate our growth ambitions and meet increasing customer demand." "What particularly interested me [about Kao Data] was Harlow and how it has already demonstrated what an AI-ready campus can deliver," Bruce adds. "With Park Royal and Stockport progressing, the business has a real opportunity to build on that foundation and scale across two of the UK's most important regions. "My priority is making sure our financial strategy helps enable that ambition, creating the capacity and flexibility to deliver the current plan while also giving the business the opportunity to pursue further growth." Passing the baton at Kao Data. Bruce succeeds Matthew Harris, who passed on his role to Bruce after taking on the position of CFO at nLighten after 12 years of tenure at Kao Data, including being a founding board member and an Investor Director. In a LinkedIn post, Matthew says: "Building a data centre platform from scratch is never a sprint, sometimes a marathon, but if you're lucky enough to build something lasting it is always a relay. "[I am] so pleased to be able to hand over the baton knowing there is plenty more to come at Kao." Strategic partners for Kao Data: NVIDIA: As a preferred partner, Kao Data's facilities are NVIDIA DGX-Ready certified. This means they are fully equipped to support high-density, GPU-accelerated hardware for AI and advanced computing. Furthermore, Kao Data's award-winning Harlow campus is part of NVIDIA's DGX Cloud offering, previously known as the Cambridge-1 Supercomputer, showcasing a shared commitment to pioneering AI development across the UK. Zayo: Zayo provides tailored edge solutions, partnering with Kao Data to expand lit and dark fibre connectivity. The collaboration introduces new connectivity solutions at the Harlow campus. Two points-of-presence offer financial services, cloud and enterprise customers low-latency fibre connectivity from the US to Europe, enhancing customer options, reducing third-party dependency and streamlining the delivery of high-speed digital services. Megaport: As Kao Data's primary software-defined networking (SDN) provider, Megaport enhances the Harlow campus with robust hyperscale cloud capabilities. Through this strategic partnership, Kao Data offers enterprise customers seamless, low-latency connectivity to major global cloud environments, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, ensuring highly secure and scalable access to support complex, distributed computing demands. Executives. * Bruce Claassen Chief Financial Officer * Matthew Harris Chief Financial Officer * Spencer Lamb CEO Company Portals