Amazon Web Services to spend £8billion on new UK data centres in tech race

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has unveiled plans to invest £8bn in the construction, maintenance and operation of several UK data centres over the next half-decade.

The cloud division of the tech behemoth anticipates that this financial boost will contribute £14bn to the UK's overall gross domestic product (GDP) up until 2028, and will support an average of more than 14,000 full-time equivalent jobs annually at local businesses, as reported by City AM.

Phil Le-Brun, director of enterprise strategy at AWS, informed City AM that the funding is "part of our long standing AWS commitment to support growth and productivity across the country."

Amazon, he stated, expects that opportunities from the investment will be distributed evenly throughout the UK.

"I think it's a really interesting opportunity this opens up for small and medium siz