DATA CENTRE STRATEGY
CREDIT: GOOGLE
Nuclear ambitions In October 2024, Google signed the world’ s first corporate agreement to purchase nuclear energy from multiple small modular reactors to be developed by Kairos Power, with the first reactor expected online by 2030 and the full 500MW deployment complete by 2035.
“ We believe that nuclear energy has a critical role to play in supporting our clean growth and helping to deliver the progress of AI,” Michael Terrell said at the time of the announcement.
In August 2025, Google announced that Kairos’ s Hermes 2 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, would supply 50MW of power under a long-term purchase agreement with Tennessee Valley Authority to power Google’ s data centres in Montgomery County, Tennessee, and Jackson County, Alabama.
Google has since expanded its nuclear strategy further, providing early-stage capital to Elementl Power to prepare three potential sites in the US for advanced nuclear power projects, with each site planned to have at least 600MW of capacity.
Global footprint expansion Google’ s capacity planning strategy extends well beyond US borders. The company has announced a $ 15bn data centre investment in Visakhapatnam, India, with 1GW of projected IT capacity and US $ 2bn allocated for renewable energy development as part of Google’ s broader US $ 75bn global data centre investment strategy for 2025.
Swapping out a motherboard at Google’ s data centre in The Dalles, Oregon
In September 2025, Google opened its data centre in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, as part of a two-year £ 5bn( US $ 6.88bn) investment in the UK. The facility features a pioneering agreement with Shell Energy Europe Limited as its 24 / 7 Carbon-Free Energy Manager, which will manage a power portfolio addressing the intermittency of clean energy generation through access to battery energy storage systems.
The planning challenge In September 2024, Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed that the company is
112 December 2025