The UK prime minister today reiterated the government’s intention of encouraging British startups to ”scale here” and “stay here”, as he announced plans to develop Britain’s sovereign compute offering, including a £400m chip plan.
Speaking at London Tech Week, Keir Starmer said that Britain was “uniquely placed to lead” the AI revolution.
His comments come as US semiconductor firm AMD announced a £2bn investment in the UK over the next five years and Dutch neocloud firm Nebius said it was committing £1.7bn to build out AI capacity in the UK.
The prime minister said: “Britain is the third largest technology economy in the world. Our startups have raised close to half of all European investment in tech this year.”
Starmer said Britain faced three choices on dealing with the rise of AI: either “stick our head in the sand”, “remove the guardrails completely” or the path of “backing British businesses creating the jobs and technologies of the future”.
Starmer said: "Where British tech companies start here, scale here, and stay here.
“But the rewards of their success are felt in communities right across the country. And where government is active in its approach towards tech."
The issue of British startups looking to deep-pocketed US investors to scale up is a long-running issue.
Earlier this year, the government launched the £500m Sovereign AI fund, which is aimed at keeping the UK's best AI startups in the UK as they scale across the world.
Today, Starmer announced plans to develop sovereign compute capability, including a “major new commitment to purchase specialist AI chips”, which was worth around £400m. The £400m commitment will see the government offer to buy AI chips from UK-based companies, in an attempt to encourage them to stay in the UK. It is part of a broader £1.1bn government plan to build domestic AI compute capacity.
In his speech, the PM also addressed the issue of AI safety, warning AI firms of their responsibility, highlighting government intervention into Elon Musk’s Grok earlier this year.
Starmer said: “They allowed their tools to be used to create disgusting, explicit AI image. So we took them on. And all tech companies should know…If they fall short on their responsibility to keep people safe. We will act with the same decisiveness.”
Image: Gemini
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