The acquisition, according to DC01UK, represents one of the largest infrastructure and real estate transactions in the world, with Equinix confirming it intends to invest a total of £3.9bn in building out the site. As such, Equinix has committed to creating two million square feet of datacentre space on the site, which is expected to house at least 250MW of compute capacity on completion.
The site, now renamed by Equinix as the Hertfordshire Campus, is expected to directly generate 2,500 jobs during the construction phase of the project, and more than 200 permanent roles once the buildout phase is finished. At present, Equinix operates 14 datacentres in the UK, and employs more than 1,200 people.
DC01UK, meanwhile, is a company formed in July 2022 through a joint venture between renewable energy consultancy Chiltern Green Energy and building developer Griggs Home.
The accompanying planning documents also made clear that DC01UK’s intention was to secure outline planning permission for a hyperscale datacentre campus to be built on the site, and then sell it on to an operator to complete the build to their own specifications.
With the Hertfordshire site now sold off, Computer Weekly contacted DC01UK if it had any further projects planned, with a spokesperson for the organisation indicating it is two projects – codenamed DC02 and DC03 – in the pipeline.
“The ambition behind the DC01UK project is extraordinary and we are delighted that the vision for this project will be taken forward by leading experts committed to delivering it to the highest standards, maintaining our ambition, realising the community benefits and embedding themselves in the growth and future of Hertfordshire,” said DC01UK director James Craig in a statement.
“For us, it’s a proud moment that also marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter as we continue to progress other UK datacentre development opportunities to drive further innovation and investment in this space across the UK.”
And while the original project attracted government support, DC01UK has received a fair amount of local opposition to its plans, including more than 900 objections to its planning permission bid.
Equinix has said it plans to work in close collaboration with local residents and businesses to ensure they reap the benefits of its investment in the area, which will include rolling out education, employment and biodiversity programmes that its vows will be “truly additive to the region.”
The company has already stated that the site will be renewably powered and will make use of “dry cooling” techniques to regulate the temperature of the equipment inside, while ensuring the site consumes the same amount of water as conventional office buildings.
Furthermore, Equinix has committed to ensuring its development will result in 54% of the site’s open spaces being retained, as well as the creation of ecological habitats that will deliver a promised biodiversity net gain of at least 10%.
James Tyler, UK managing director of Equinix, said the project represents the company’s biggest investment in Europe so far, and is a big win for both the national and local economies.
“This development brings a significant amount of datacentre capacity to Britain, contributing to the government’s AI growth ambition,” said Tyler. “But this investment goes far beyond building the infrastructure needed to unlock the UK’s digital potential. It’s the evolution of an ongoing partnership with the local and national community.”
Liz Kendall, secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, said the creation of the Equinix datacentre campus will boost UK businesses in a wide range of industries, from life sciences to financial services.
“This £3.9bn investment is a huge win for Britain. It will give businesses … the ability to connect to thousands of other businesses across the world in an instant, powering our AI ambitions, boosting growth and creating hundreds of well-paid jobs. This is about making sure the UK is at the forefront of the digital revolution and ensuring that every community benefits from the opportunities this new technology brings.”
Global retail is headed for a robust 2025 holiday season, with Salesforce projecting record November–December digital sales of $1.25 trillion, a 4 per cent year-over-year (YoY) rise. US digital sales are forecast to hit $288 billion, up 2 per cent. The growth is strongly tied to the rapid adoption of AI and agent-driven shopping journeys, which are expected to contribute $263 billion in global holiday orders — 21 per cent of total sales.
Salesforce’s analysis, based on data from 1.5 billion global shoppers across Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and Agentforce, shows AI-driven and agent-referred traffic is transforming how consumers shop.
AI-assisted traffic jumped 119 per cent YoY in H1 2025, with conversion rates more than 700 per cent higher than social media traffic and 200 per cent higher than traditional channels like search and direct, Salesforce said in a release.
Salesforce projects record $1.25 trillion global digital holiday sales with AI driving $263 billion of orders.
AI traffic surged 119 per cent YoY with 700 per cent higher conversions than social media.
Resale market to hit $64 billion, 77 per cent shoppers to wait for Cyber Week.
Gen Z to spend 3x more in stores.
Retailers urged to adopt AI-first, optimise for generative search, and streamline support.
AI tools are increasingly being used for product discovery, with 17 per cent of consumers using AI assistants or LLMs for searches in the past year, and trust in these recommendations surging to 86 per cent from 46 per cent in May. Retailers are being urged to embrace generative engine optimisation (GEO) — or AI optimisation (AIO) — to ensure product listings and promotions are discoverable in AI-driven search results.
Salesforce highlights thriftiness and sustainability as major drivers this season, with $64 billion in holiday sales projected from the resale market. Forty-six per cent of consumers plan to gift second-hand items, mainly to save money amid trade and tariff uncertainty. Seventy-seven per cent of shoppers are expected to hold off on major purchases until Cyber Week, reinforcing its importance.
Despite surging digital sales, physical retail remains crucial, especially for Gen Z. Three in four Gen Z shoppers plan to shop in stores, and for every $1 they spend online, they are projected to spend $3 in physical stores. Retailers are being encouraged to create seamless omnichannel experiences to capture this generation both online and offline.
Retailers are likely to scale back discounts, with 2 per cent fewer orders expected to include promo codes due to rising supply chain costs. Meanwhile, AI-powered customer service is set to grow 39 per cent this season, helping reduce routine interactions and driving a 2.5 per cent decline in overall service cases. This will free human agents to focus on more complex issues.
Salesforce advises retailers to adopt an AI-first mindset to capture their share of the forecast growth. Integrating AI across product discovery, promotions, and customer support will be key to maximising conversion rates and enhancing the shopping journey from browsing to checkout.
To mark the end of 2025, I was going to write about the amazing work of Francesca Bria and her colleagues who have created the fascinating and very informative website The authoritarian stack – How tech billionaires are building a post-democratic America and why Europe is next. The site outlines five domains of privatised sovereignty – data, defence, space, energy and money. In other words, the foundations of democratic power.
Bria suggests these domains “form the architecture of privatised sovereignty – a technological regime where power flows through laws, infrastructure and automated platforms”.
I was going to follow my analysis of The authoritarian stack with a counter-proposal referencing Bria and her colleagues on an alternative view of what the future could hold – titled, A European alternative for digital sovereignty.
According to Martin Hullin,director of the digitalisation and the common good programme at German non-profit foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung, this report maps a way forward, “Recognising that complete self-sufficiency is neither feasible nor desirable, the initiative calls instead for a shared effort to bolster strategic capabilities and cultivate beneficial international partnerships. It also seeks to demonstrate that digital sovereignty is not about isolation but about advancing a shared vision of the common good”.
Hullin invites us to “consider how this mapping and its recommendations can help spark innovations that are both competitive and compassionate… to build a future in which digitalisation serves not as a source of division but as a force for the common good.”
A way out of the mess
These are very important things. They are things you need to understand. They shine a light on a positive and meaningful way out of the mess we are in. They are things you should definitely read if you want to know what’s really going on in the world.
Imagine that – people somehow raising a newborn child without ChatGPT?
As a human who has actually had a baby, I can reassure all you anxious readers that not only has it been possible for us to do this, we’ve been doing it for centuries without the help of Sam Altman and ChatGPT.
Obviously before ChatGPT we understood that it takes “a village to raise a child” – our families, friends, communities, neighbours, teachers, civil society and amazingly our own innate instincts as well, or what we generally call “parents”. Now thank God all we will need is ChatGPT – how amazingly efficient. Er – thanks so much, Sam?
Incredibly Altman makes this statement while at the same time being comfortable with the contradictory statement he made in an earlier OpenAI podcast suggesting that people “have a very high degree of trust in ChatGPT, which is interesting because, like, AI hallucinates. It should be the tech that you don’t trust that much”.
So which is it Mr Altman? Should I trust something as important as raising my baby to you or not?
Of course, of note and utterly predictable is the help Altman actually asked ChatGPT for in relation to his baby. Turns out it’s all about competitive advantage. He met another tech bro at a party who had a child the same age as his own. His colleague mentioned that his child was crawling at six months. Altman’s, on the other hand, was not.
When the AI bubble bursts – and it will – it will take us all with it. That’s not a future I’d wish for any child and it’s why we should be more worried about the impact of ChatGPT on our children than its ability to raise them
Fuelled with anxiety and envy at such extraordinary baby prowess, Altman raced home to ask ChatGPT if something was wrong and whether he should take his six-month old to the doctor to check his progress.
Here is what his machine told him: “Of course it’s normal, of course you don’t need to go to the doctor. You know parents do all these sorts of things. And, by the way, this is personalised – ChatGPT gets to know you. And, you know, you’re the CEO of OpenAI. You probably are around all these high-achieving people. Maybe you don’t want to project that onto your kid? And you should maybe just relax and he’ll be fine.”
A bro reassurance machine
Yup – that’s exactly the kind of reassurance I’d have been looking for when I was knee deep in nappies and formula. I’d really want to have been reassured that I’m doing fine ranking against my high-achieving colleagues, because really that’s what was top of my mind when I was a sleep-deprived, exhausted new mum trying to figure out how to get a buggy and all those baby supplies into the car on my own. Not to mention how would I push a shopping trolley around while also simultaneously managing the buggy? Clearly ChatGPT is more of a bro reassurance machine than Baby and child could ever have been.
But the most interesting thing about the Jimmy Kimmel interview was the audience reaction. As Altman makes his ridiculous statement, there is a ripple of quiet laughter, as if they are saying, “He is surely not claiming that ChatGPT can raise a child?” Then the laughter deepens as the audience begins to understand the ludicrous nature of that statement and that Altman actually believes it.
It’s a sound I’m hoping to hear lots more of in 2026 – the sound of venture capitalists, angel investors, technology journalists, mainstream journalists and responsible governments calling out the madness of the last three years and the insane claims from the broligarchy about the impact of AI.
It’s the sound of tech leaders taking responsibility for their impact on society, politics, democracy, our planet, our futures. Because when the AI bubble bursts – and it will – it will take us all with it. That’s not a future I’d wish for any child and it’s why we should be more worried about the impact of ChatGPT on our children than its ability to raise them. What it’s going to do to their future should be keeping us awake at night.
So here’s to a market correction in 2026 – and not only a market correction but one where we return to placing our trust for a brighter and sustainable future in the village that has served us so well for centuries, rather than the crazed and destructive visions of those underpinning The authoritarian stack. Surely our children deserve a more enlightened stewardship than that offered by AI?
My Christmas wish is that we have the wisdom to understand what AI can and cannot do – where it is useful and where it is destructive – so that we can protect our children from doomscrolling through the world under the stewardship of men whose political and doctrinal influences range from national conservatism, techno accelerationism, crypto-sovereignty, online radicalisation and tech militarism. It’s all there in the Stack, so you could read that or you could just gather your children close this Christmas and start thinking about and working towards a better vision for the world in 2026 for our deeply human children most of all.
OpenAI’s chief communications officer, Hannah Wong, announced internally on Monday that she is leaving the company in January, WIRED has learned. In a statement to WIRED, OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood confirmed the departure.
“Hannah has played a defining role in shaping how people understand OpenAI and the work we do,” said CEO Sam Altman and CEO of applications Fidji Simo in a joint statement. “She has an extraordinary ability to bring clarity to complex ideas, and to do it with care and grace. We’re deeply grateful for her leadership and partnership these last five years, and we wish her the very best.”
Wong joined OpenAI in 2021 when it was a relatively small research lab, and has led the company’s communications team as ChatGPT has grown into one of the world’s largest consumer products. She was considered instrumental in leading the company through the PR crisis that was Altman’s brief ouster and re-hiring in 2023—a period the company internally calls “the blip.” Wong assumed the chief communications officer role in August 2024, and has expanded the company’s communications team since then.
In a drafted LinkedIn post shared with WIRED, Wong said that OpenAI’s VP of communications, Lindsey Held, will lead the company’s communications team until a new chief communications officer is hired. OpenAI’s VP of marketing, Kate Rouch, is leading the search for Wong’s replacement.
“These years have been intense and deeply formative,” said Wong in the LinkedIn post. “I’m grateful I got to help tell OpenAI’s story, introduce ChatGPT and other incredible products to the world, and share more about the people forging the path to AGI during an extraordinary moment of growth and momentum.”
Wong says she looks forward to spending more time with her husband and kids as she figures out the next chapter in her career.
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