US knowledge big pledges £100m Northern Eire funding

Seagate Know-how, a $40bn knowledge storage firm primarily based out of California has introduced plans to take a position £100m in an R&D undertaking in Northern Eire.

The undertaking will see the corporate spend money on nano-photonic innovation, primarily state-of-the-art exhausting drives to assist industrial-scale knowledge storage within the period of AI.

The five-year plan will happen in Seagate’s Londonderry web site and has been backed by a further £15m from Make investments NI, the area’s native financial growth company.

“In at this time’s AI-driven world, knowledge quantity isn’t simply rising—the worth of knowledge is evolving as organisations rethink what it takes to coach AI fashions and retain new, extremely precious knowledge,” stated John Morris, chief expertise officer at Seagate.

“To unlock knowledge’s full potential, we’d like storage options that aren’t solely huge in capability however engineered for reliability, sturdiness, and scale.

“That’s precisely what this funding allows. Our Northern Eire facility is a world centre of excellence, producing over 1 / 4 of the world’s recording heads and pioneering semiconductor laser R&D—essential for next-generation exhausting drives.”

Seagate has stated its mixed funding with Make investments NI will create new native high-skilled jobs within the area and enhance Northern Eire’s worldwide competitiveness as a hub for knowledge innovation.

“Now we have labored very intently with Seagate over the previous three many years and have helped the ability right here evolve right into a world-leading manufacturing and pioneering R&D Centre,” stated Kieran Donoghue, chief govt at Make investments NI.

“This places Northern Eire on the forefront of the corporate’s innovation plans and can allow it to ramp up productiveness by way of state-of the-art tools.

“The Seagate and Make investments NI groups will now work collectively to make sure the profitable implementation of this main funding.”