British energy unicorn Fuse is moving into AI infrastructure, betting that its control over electricity supply will allow it to build data centres faster than rivals struggling with lengthy grid delays.
The London-based company, founded by former Revolut executives Alan Chang and Charles Orr, has launched Fuse Compute, offering businesses access to Nvidia chips hosted in UK data centres powered by Fuse.
Its first 128 Nvidia B300 GPUs are expected to come online in December, rising to 1,024 by the second quarter of 2027. The company then plans to add 22 megawatts (MW) of data centre power capacity in late 2027, with a further 116MW planned from 2028.
“Energy costs are only five per cent of GPU rental revenues, so energy costs are not a significant consideration when pricing GPU rentals”, Chang told City AM. “The key advantage Fuse possesses is energy availability, which means much faster speed to stand up data centres, and this will allow our compute customers to scale up much faster”.
His comments challenge the idea that cheaper renewable energy alone could give Fuse a pricing advantage in the increasingly competitive market for AI computing power.
The move marks a significant departure for the $5bn (£3.7bn) energy business, which launched in 2022 and now supplies electricity to 470,000 British households.
It comes as the government’s ambitions to make Britain a global AI powerhouse face mounting pressure from electricity shortages and delays connecting data centres to the grid.
Earlier this week, Microsoft pulled out of a planned £2bn AI data centre project in Essex after developer Nscale was told securing sufficient grid power could be delayed until the 2030s.
The setback has renewed questions over Britain’s ability to deliver the infrastructure underpinning its AI ambitions.
“Fuse has been building energy infrastructure since before the AI wave”, Chang added. “We have a deep understanding of energy infrastructure that many other data centre developers do not possess”.
Can Fuse deliver?
Fuse has 142MW of data centre connections in its pipeline across 15 projects, alongside more than 1GW of planned power generation.
It says its latest solar development was built around 30 per cent below the industry average cost, giving it an advantage over competitors reliant on third-party energy suppliers.
But those savings will not necessarily translate into cheaper AI computing. Chang said Fuse would price its GPUs competitively, rather than promising to undercut established providers.
Its December launch will comprise just 128 Nvidia B300 GPUs, while the far larger developments planned for 2027 and 2028 have yet to come online. The company has not disclosed pricing and contracts will be negotiated individually.
Fuse is also pitching itself as a British alternative to overseas cloud providers, offering domestic AI companies greater control over where their data is processed.
“Compute is critical national infrastructure,” Chang said. “British AI companies can keep sensitive data and models fully under UK jurisdiction”.
He added that overseas AI companies could also use Fuse’s UK facilities to serve British customers with lower latency”.
The company expects its near-term data centre projects to represent £1bn of UK infrastructure investment and support 250 construction and operational jobs.
The expansion follows rapid growth in its energy business, which reached group-level profitability earlier this year.
Speaking to City AM in June, Chang blamed Britain’s planning system for holding back infrastructure investment.
“There is more money chasing infrastructure projects than there are infrastructure projects”, he said, calling it a “self-imposed bottleneck for growth”.
The government’s Compute Roadmap estimates Britain will need at least 6GW of AI-capable data centre capacity by 2030.