Sage chief executive Steve Hare has questioned the drive to build data centres across Britain, arguing that the UK's greater opportunity lies in developing applications that put artificial intelligence to work for customers.

Hare, who leads the Newcastle-headquartered FTSE 100 software group, made the comments in an interview with Sean Farrington for the BBC's Big Boss Interview, published on 23 September.

“I don’t really see why we need data centres all over the UK,” Hare said, describing himself as something of a “contrarian” on the issue.

His argument is not against AI investment. Instead, Hare believes Britain needs to be more selective about where it can realistically compete as spending on artificial intelligence accelerates around the world.

He told the BBC that data centres provide the physical computing infrastructure on which AI runs, but argued that the greater economic value lies in the intelligence developed through AI models and, ultimately, the applications built on top of them.

Hare said the UK was strong at taking new technologies and turning them into products for customers, but had historically struggled to scale successful technology businesses to the size achieved in the US.

Sage is one of the exceptions. Hare pointed to the relative scarcity of UK technology companies reaching revenues measured in billions of pounds, with Sage among the small number to have done so.

The emergence of companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic has created enormous demand for computing infrastructure as they train and operate increasingly powerful AI models.

But Hare argued that Britain does not need to replicate their strategy.

Those companies have chosen to become “full-stack providers”, he said, investing across computing infrastructure, AI models and applications. Hare questioned whether the UK has either the scale or need to compete in all of those areas.

He also challenged the idea that Britain could establish complete sovereignty over the infrastructure and technology underpinning AI. Instead, he suggested the UK would inevitably work alongside larger international players while concentrating its own efforts where it has stronger capabilities.

That means applications.

Rather than trying to build a British equivalent of every major AI model, Hare said companies can take intelligence developed elsewhere and apply it to industries and customers they understand.

“I think the UK is world class at that,” he said.

His argument is partly based on what is happening to the economics of AI. Competition between model developers is pushing down the cost of accessing artificial intelligence, Hare said, while new models and capabilities are arriving at increasing speed.

If the intelligence itself becomes cheaper and more widely available, more of the opportunity could shift towards businesses capable of applying it to specific problems.

Sage provides a North East example of exactly the kind of company Hare is describing.

As Review North covered in August in our analysis of the region's emerging AI economy, Sage is increasingly embedding artificial intelligence into products customers already use for accounting, finance, payroll, HR and business management.

That work has accelerated during 2026.

In April, Sage announced a further expansion of AI agents across finance, HR and operations. Its Finance Intelligence Agent is designed to analyse financial information and prepare actions such as payment reminders and approvals, while leaving final decisions with the user. Other agents are being introduced into HR, payroll and enterprise-management systems.

Sage is also opening more of its platform to outside developers, with tools allowing partners to build specialised AI agents that connect with Sage data and customer workflows.

Hare has previously described that integration of AI into everyday business software as central to the company's strategy.

“By embedding AI directly into our customers’ day-to-day work, we are making our solutions more valuable,” he said when Sage reported its half-year results in May.

Sage is not trying to build a general-purpose frontier model to compete directly with OpenAI or Anthropic. It is taking increasingly capable AI technology and applying it to an area where it already has software, specialist knowledge and millions of business customers.

It is, in effect, pursuing the application-layer strategy Hare now believes the UK should follow more widely.

Hare's comments also have an obvious relevance to the North East, although he did not criticise any of the region's planned data-centre developments specifically.

Infrastructure is a significant part of the North East AI Growth Zone. The programme is anchored around Cobalt Park in North Tyneside and Cambois in Northumberland, where billions of pounds of data-centre investment is planned.

The North East Mayoral Strategic Authority says the Growth Zone could ultimately support more than 5,000 jobs and unlock up to £30bn of private investment. Its strategy extends beyond infrastructure, with separate ambitions around AI skills, adoption, innovation and the creation of new technology businesses.

At Cambois, Blackstone has committed £10bn to the QTS data-centre development. At Cobalt Park, Nscale, OpenAI and Nvidia are involved in Stargate UK, which is intended to provide sovereign AI computing infrastructure.

Hare's comments therefore do not necessarily contradict what the North East is trying to build. The regional strategy itself increasingly combines infrastructure with skills, adoption and innovation.

But they sharpen the question of where the longer-term economic value will come from.

Review North argued in August that data-centre investment gives the region an important piece of AI infrastructure, but that the bigger prize is turning that capability into locally created products, intellectual property, growing companies and higher productivity.

The chief executive of the North East's largest technology company is now making a similar argument on a national scale.

For Hare, Britain does not need to own every layer of artificial intelligence to succeed in it. It needs companies capable of taking the technology that already exists and turning it into something customers will pay for. Sage is already trying to do exactly that.