The UK technology minister Peter Kyle has been accused of being “too cosy” with US tech giants after new government data showed a rise in meetings between Kyle and US tech giants in the first quarter of 2025.
Kyle held 15 meetings with Google, Anthropic, Amazon, OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia executives, or executives representing those companies, between January and March this year, according to information published by the government, analysed by Tech.eu.
This compares to the ten meetings Kyle held with executives from the same tech giants in the previous quarter. Kyle has faced criticism that he is too close to US big tech firms at the expense of smaller UK firms.
Victoria Collins, the Liberal Democrats' science and technology spokesperson, said: "We’ve long known that Kyle is too cosy with US tech giants.
“He should be focused on supporting British businesses at the cutting edge of industry rather than rubbing shoulders with execs from the very companies kicking their heels on improving online safety for our children."
Kyle held four meetings with executives from Google or those representing Google, four with Anthropic, two with Amazon, two with OpenAI, and one each with Meta, Microsoft and Nvidia in Q1 this year.
Along with the US tech giants, Kyle also held meetings with less well-known US tech companies such as CoreWeave, Groq and US VC firm Lightspeed.
The government filings also show that in Q1 Kyle travelled to San Francisco, where he met OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia and that he gave a keynote speech at Nvidia’s GTC conference.
The filings shed some light on the nature of the meetings. For example, Kyle met Google’s European boss Debbie Weinstein to discuss the AI Opportunities Action Plan and he met Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis to discuss the UK’s AI policy and AI economy.
He also met OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, as previously reported by Tech.eu. Kyle also held a meeting with Meta's chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan, Nick Clegg's replacement, to discuss the UK regulatory landscape and implementation of the Online Harms Act.
One of Kyle’s two meetings with OpenAI was “to discuss AI, digital infrastructure, and the digital transformation of the public sector".
The less well-known North American tech firms Kyle met with were AMD, CoreWeave, Mozilla, Signal, Qualcomm, Cohere, Rigetti Computing, Groq and PsiQuantum.
A spokesperson for the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology said: “As the Department for Technology, we make no apologies for regularly engaging with the sector – one that employs nearly two million people in the UK.
“Regular engagement with technology companies of all sizes is fundamental to delivering economic growth and transforming our public services as part of our Plan for Change. Government engagement has helped to attract significant tech investment over the last year including £44 billion in our AI sector alone.
“Whether discussing investment, partnerships, smart regulation or recent new laws for a safer online world, we will always act in the public interest.”
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