Amazon has announced plans to invest £40 billion in the UK over the next three years (2025-2027). This investment includes building four new fulfilment centres and new delivery stations nationwide, as well as upgrades and expansions to its existing network of over 100 operations buildings across the country. The investment will create thousands of new permanent, full-time jobs in the UK, with the vast majority outside of London and the South East. These include 2,000 jobs at the previously announced state-of-the-art fulfilment centre in Hull and 2,000 jobs at another in Northampton, plus additional positions at new sites in the East Midlands and at delivery stations across the country.
The announcement demonstrates Amazon’s commitment to supporting growth and productivity for the benefit of its customers, partners, and the wider economy, with the investment expected to drive innovation throughout the UK and contribute an estimated additional £38 billion to the UK’s GDP.
As a top 10 private sector employer, Amazon already employs over 75,000 people in the UK, providing roles of all kinds, at all levels, across every region of the country. Amazon pays full-time employees a minimum of £28,000 per year (£30,000 in London), and will create over 60 different roles at the new sites, including positions for robotics technicians, safety experts, and mechatronic engineers.
Alongside the planned creation of the new operations facilities, the £40 billion investment includes: opening two new buildings at Amazon’s corporate HQ in East London; ongoing investment to enhance Amazon's transportation infrastructure in every region, enabling faster and more efficient service to customers nationwide and critical support to the thousands of small and medium-sized UK businesses who sell their products on Amazon’s stores across the world; support for Amazon's workforce through competitive compensation, benefits, and pioneering training programmes; and ongoing commitment to the UK creative industry, including the redevelopment of the historic Bray Film Studios in Berkshire, continued investment in multimillion-pound skills and training programmes, and landmark original TV and film productions.
The investment also includes part of the £8 billion previously announced in September 2024 for building, operating, and maintaining data centres in the UK (from 2024-2028) to help meet the growing needs of organisations of all sizes, support the UK's ambition to increase AI compute capacity, and help transform the UK's digital economy.
Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, said:
“Amazon has been proud to serve our customers in the UK for the past 27 years. Thanks to their support, we’ve grown to be part of over 100 communities nationwide, from developing drone technology in Darlington to producing world-class entertainment at our studios in Bray. We now employ over 75,000 people and have become one of the UK's largest private sector employers and taxpayers. When Amazon invests, it’s not only in London and the South East – we’re bringing innovation and job creation to communities throughout England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, strengthening the UK’s economy and delivering better experiences for customers wherever they live.”
Over the last 10 years (2015-2024), Amazon has invested more than £75 billion in its operations in the UK to serve customers and create high-quality jobs in safe working environments. Amazon is also significantly investing in R&D in the UK, including in drone technology, with Darlington set to be the location of the UK’s first Prime Air drone deliveries. At R&D sites in Cambridge, Edinburgh, Swansea, and London, teams work on global products and services for AWS, Prime Video, Music, Games, Alexa, and logistics and operations technology.
As part of its continued commitment to the UK, Amazon plans to invest £8 billion between 2024 and 2028 to build, maintain, and operate data centres in the UK. Customers in the UK can already access a comprehensive range of AI optimised chips, enabling them to train and deploy models, and build sophisticated AI and generative AI applications with exceptional performance. This investment will help meet growing customer demand for AWS technologies in the UK, including AI, and support the government’s goal of increasing the UK’s AI capabilities and AI compute capacity. According to recent research, on average at least one business in the UK is adopting AI every minute. The investment is estimated to contribute £14 billion to the UK’s GDP over this period, and support an average of 14,000 full-time jobs annually at local UK businesses in the AWS data centre supply chain.
Amazon’s continued expansion will create career opportunities right across the UK, as the company is focused on upskilling its employees and preparing them for the next generation of jobs. It offers Career Choice, an innovative programme which covers up to £8,000 of training costs to secure nationally recognised qualifications in areas like environmental technology, IT, human resources, accounting, language skills, or HGV driving. Over 23,000 participants have already benefited from this programme. Earlier this year, Amazon announced it is creating more than 1,000 new apprenticeships in the UK in 2025, building on the 5,300 apprenticeships across 62 different programmes that Amazon has provided since 2013. Earlier this month, Amazon committed to partner with the UK government's ambition to train 7.5 million UK workers in essential AI skills by 2030 - equivalent to around 20% of the UK workforce.
Amazon is also committed to supporting people from underserved and underrepresented backgrounds find meaningful employment opportunities, through employability programmes at Amazon for military veterans, care leavers, prison leavers, and young people with learning disabilities and autism via the Amazon Supported Internship programme.
Beyond its own workforce, as part of a commitment to making AI education accessible to anyone with a desire to learn, Amazon launched "AI Ready" in 2023, providing two million people of all ages with free AI skills training by 2025. The company achieved this goal a year early. In April 2025, Amazon announced it would bring the Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance to the UK, with the goal to provide 100,000 people with AI skills by 2030, by working in collaboration with educational institutions (including the University of Exeter and the University of Manchester), government leaders, and enterprises across the country. The program will prepare students for entry-level technical jobs by adding AWS skills training and industry-approved content to existing classroom curricula. Students will gain hands-on experience and connect directly with potential employers, building both the technical skills and practical experience needed for career success.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced the UK’s largest-ever order for electric trucks, with more than 140 new electric HGVs joining Amazon’s transportation network from this year, and new charging infrastructure to support them. Once fully operational, these eHGVs are expected to transport more than 300 million packages each year with no exhaust emissions. Amazon remains the world’s largest purchaser of renewable energy, investing in more than 40 solar and wind projects in the UK to date. These projects will provide an estimated 950 MWs of new carbon free energy capacity, enough energy to power the equivalent of 860,000 UK households annually.
