THE DATA CENTRE INTERVIEW
Kao Data’ s 2026 leadership transition has landed at a defining moment for the company. Spencer Lamb stepped into the CEO role in late May 2026, then in the following month the company announced a 22MW, ten-year deal with Nebius – one of the UK’ s largest AI cloud agreements – forming part of Nebius’ s £ 1.7bn( US $ 2.77bn) investment in the country.
As the company’ s Harlow campus takes on some of the country’ s most demanding inference workloads, Spencer draws a careful line between AI adoption and AI creation, and what that distinction means for the UK’ s sovereign ambitions.
In this exclusive interview with Data Centre Magazine, Spencer discusses the significance of the deal for the Harlow campus, the engineering demands of AI inference workloads and why sustainability remains built into every facility Kao Data delivers – alongside his view on what the UK needs to do to strengthen its sovereign AI capability.
Six years at Kao Data precede CEO transition Spencer’ s commercial background in the data centre industry and his six years at Kao Data have shaped his view of the business.
“ I have spent my career on the commercial side of this industry – and my time at Kao Data has given me a genuine understanding of what every part of the organisation contributes to the solution we deliver for customers,”
“Our role is to keep bringing advanced AI infrastructure into the country”
Spencer Lamb CEO Kao Data
he says.“ Sitting across those functions rather than within one of them has allowed me to challenge how things are usually done and to push for a better way.”
The timing of his move into the top role reflects the maturity of the foundations Kao Data has established.
“ Stepping into the role now feels right because we have put the foundations in place,” Spencer says.
“ We have the ability to acquire land, secure power, design to a customer’ s specific requirement and operate to the outcomes we contract to. With that foundation established – and established quite quickly – we can now layer growth on top of it.”
22 August 2026