04 November 2025
Argyll Data Development has announced a strategic partnership with SambaNova to establish the United Kingdom’s first renewable-powered AI inference cloud.
This pioneering project will harness wind, wave, and solar energy generated on-site at the Killellan AI Growth Zone situated on Scotland’s Cowal Peninsula. The initiative aims to demonstrate that large-scale AI infrastructure can be both environmentally sustainable and highly efficient.
AI inference is the process of “using” an AI model, like ChatGPT, to answer questions on a dataset that it hasn’t been trained on. This process is very energy intensive, with a study from Google showing that the per-prompt energy impact of using a chatbot is the equivalent of watching TV for around nine seconds.
At the heart of this collaboration are SambaNova’s air-cooled SN40L systems, designed for maximum efficiency and minimal power consumption. Each rack consumes roughly one-tenth of the power used by traditional GPU systems and eliminates the need for liquid cooling, all while maintaining enterprise-grade performance. The first phase of the Killellan site will initially provide between 100 and 600 megawatts of capacity, with plans to scale up to over two gigawatts once fully developed. A private-wire renewable energy network, coupled with vanadium-flow battery storage, will enable the data centre to operate independently in ‘island-mode,’ with future plans to integrate with the broader grid.
“Together with SambaNova and our strategic partners, we’re building a sovereign AI infrastructure powered by renewable energy, demonstrating that sustainability and scale can go hand in hand,” said Peter Griffiths, executive chairman of Argyll.
The Killellan AI Growth Zone is envisioned as a model for sovereign-scale AI compute, designed to keep sensitive workloads within the UK to promote regional economic growth. The project is expected to attract a total investment of around £15 billion, generate over 2,000 construction jobs annually, and create approximately 1,200 permanent roles. Waste heat generated by the data centre will be repurposed to support vertical farming, aquaculture, and district heating, exemplifying environmentally beneficial applications beyond AI.
