12 February 2026

The collaboration focuses on deploying micro-edge compute capabilities across Cornerstone's national estate to address the urgent need for increased data processing speed and capacity, data sovereignty, and national infrastructure resilience. As the global geopolitical climate becomes increasingly unpredictable and regulatory frameworks around data privacy tighten, the question of where data is processed and who governs and protects the underlying hardware has moved from a technical concern to a matter of national security. This partnership arrives at a critical moment, providing a UK-centric solution to the growing dependency on centralised, often foreign-owned, cloud architectures.

The core of the Cornerstone and StonesThro partnership is the shared ambition that for critical systems to be truly resilient, computing power must reside within national borders and closer to the point of use. By using localised processing, known as micro-edge cloud compute, the partnership ensures that sensitive data remains under UK control, reducing exposure to international jurisdiction problems and external interference.

Ashley Sellar, CEO at StonesThro, said digital resilience has become synonymous with national resilience. "In the current geopolitical climate, digital resilience is synonymous with national resilience," said Sellar. "As our critical national infrastructure becomes increasingly digitised and data heavy, we cannot afford to rely solely on centralised data centres located hundreds of miles away, or even in other countries. This partnership is about providing mission critical industries access to a living network of micro-data power to deliver real time connectivity and compute power without distance, delay or dependency. By doing this we are ensuring that the UK has the control, security, and correct latency performance required for the next generation of digital services."

Whilst some providers are struggling with the logistical and technological innovation challenges of micro-edge deployment, the Cornerstone and StonesThro partnership already has an impressive head start. Cornerstone's unrivalled nationwide estate has the potential to bypass traditional barriers to scale with the ability to provide a large number and variety of site types to micro-edge cloud users.

Pat Coxen, CEO at Cornerstone, said the breadth and reach of the company's infrastructure estate has the ability to enable UK digital connectivity on an unrivalled scale. "The breadth and reach of our infrastructure estate has the ability to enable UK digital connectivity on an unrivalled scale," said Coxen. "By partnering with StonesThro, we are evolving our estate infrastructure from being predominantly about communication to focussing on locally processing data, and the intelligent application of information. We are providing the 'where' for the micro-edge, enabling a network that is not only resilient, but also physically situated within the communities and industries it serves."

From autonomous vehicles and smart cities to healthcare and emergency services, the demand for real-time data processing to support fully automated systems is increasing all the time. This partnership positions micro-edge as a vital component of the UK's wider conversation around data control. It provides a plan for how national infrastructure can be leveraged to protect digital borders whilst encouraging technological innovation. By bringing compute closer to the end-user, Cornerstone and StonesThro are not only solving capacity and latency challenges but are providing an essential foundation for a more secure, nationally distributed, and digitally resilient United Kingdom.