US Tech Giants Pledge Billions in UK AI Investment Amid Trump's State Visit

US Tech Giants Race to Spend Billions in UK AI Push

Microsoft and Nvidia unveiled plans to invest up to $45 billion in the UK during US President Donald Trump's state visit. Microsoft and Nvidia have unveiled plans to invest up to $45 billion dollars into the UK economy, in a move that will bolster the building of more data centers as well as research and development into artificial intelligence. The investment comes as US President Donald Trump travels to Britain, where he is expected to announce a US-UK tech deal alongside UK prime minister Keir Starmer. As part of the agreement, Microsoft has committed to invest $30 billion in AI infrastructure over the next four years. The company claims this is the largest financial commitment it has ever made in the UK and will make up more than two thirds of the total investment announced into the UK this week, timed to Trump's visit. "We are focused on British pounds, not empty tech promises," Brad Smith, Microsoft's vice chair and president, told journalists in a virtual briefing ahead of the announcement today. "We will be good for every cent of this investment." Half of the money will go to capital expansion -- "all new money, all new investments," Smith claimed -- whereas the other half will go to efforts like a partnership with the data center business Nscale, to finance and use its facilities. Nvidia, for its part, has pledged to spend up to $15 billion on AI-related R&D efforts in the UK. The chipmaker will not invest directly into building out the infrastructure, instead acting through its partners CoreWeave and Nscale. This announcement comes alongside a new joint venture from Nvidia, Nscale, and OpenAI today, which plans to "strengthen the UK's sovereign compute capabilities" through an AI infrastructure partnership called Stargate UK. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang traveled with Trump to the UK during his state visit this week. "Stargate UK ensures OpenAI's world-leading AI models can run on local computing power in the UK, for the UK," said OpenAI in a statement. OpenAI will provide up to 8,000 GPUs in the first quarter of 2026 with the potential to scale to 31,000 GPUs over time. As part of the agreement, OpenAI says Nscale is set to significantly expand its capacity across a number of sites in the UK, including Cobalt Park in Newcastle, which will be part of a newly designated AI Growth Zone in the North East. "This historic commitment from Nscale shows how the UK can build the future of AI, together with our partners from the US," Nscale CEO Josh Payne said in a statement. "It's only by building world-class AI infrastructure that we will stay competitive in the global race." When asked to characterize Microsoft's relationship with Nscale, Smith said simply, "we write the check, and they spend the money." Smith was quick to claim that the company did not get a request from the Trump administration to make an investment announcement. "We have had many conversations with the UK government, including with folks at Number 10, as you would expect, and those have been going on for months," he said.

UK cosies up to big tech with $42 billion data center and AI investment deal

UK inks deals with OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, Coreweave, ScaleAI, and more. A bevy of tech companies have announced over $40 billion in collective investment in the UK to coincide with the second state visit of President Trump. With announcements of cooperation from Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and others, the UK is set to build new data centers, as well as AI and energy infrastructure, reports Reuters. The British government hopes that having a lighter approach to AI legislation and planning will allow the country to attract further investment from technology companies that may be deterred by tighter regulations in the EU. Since coming to power in spring 2024, the UK's Labour government has struggled to balance its progressive policies with a need to drive economic growth in the wake of years of stagnation within the country. Despite improving wages for public sector workers and driving investment into public services, the economy has failed to rally like the government hoped. Encouraging such large-scale investment from so many international companies is a potential way to dig the UK out of the economic hole it's found itself in. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hailed the news as both prosperous for the UK and the relationship between the United States and the UK. "This Tech Prosperity Deal marks a generational step change in our relationship with the US, shaping the futures of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic, and delivering growth, security and opportunity up and down the country," he said. "By teaming-up with world-class companies from both the UK and US, we're laying the foundations for a future where together we are world leaders in the technology of tomorrow, creating highly skilled jobs, putting more money in people's pockets and ensuring this partnership benefits every corner of the United Kingdom." Several deals have been announced from various companies, ranging from hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to several billions. Google opened a new data center in Waltham, Lincolnshire, as part of a $6.8 billion investment package that will see it expand its London-based Google DeepMind research center for AI research in science and healthcare. These projects will support over 8,250 jobs and help Google enhance its Maps, Cloud, and search tools in the UK. OpenAI announced Stargate UK in partnership with Nvidia and UK-based Nscale. Together they're developing several new AI data centers beginning at the site of a former coal power station in Northumberland, north-east England. This is one of the UK's newly designated "AI Growth Zones," which are designed to ease the building of data centers and revitalize under-invested areas of the UK. Backed by an additional $13.5 billion in investment from financial firm Blackstone, the area already has an established wind power presence, with further plans to develop solar energy and battery storage facilities to reduce the environmental impact of these new developments. To power the new data centers, OpenAI and Nscale will be importing tens of thousands of graphics cards from Nvidia. OpenAI said that it would "offtake up to 8,000 GPUs in Q1 2026 with the potential to scale to 31,000 GPUs over time." That's just the start, though. In its announcement, Nvidia claimed it was in talks to provide up to 60,000 Grace Blackwell GPUs to the UK, as well as an additional 120,000 Blackwell GPUs for AI data centers in the UK. Over 20,000 of those will be invested in the new supercomputer Nscale is developing in Essex, with Microsoft now joining the project to provide additional investment. Microsoft's UK investment could well be the largest. With over $30 billion promised over the next four years, Microsoft pledged at least half of that towards AI infrastructure, and the rest to expanding Microsoft's existing activities in the country, including gaming and Windows services. There is also a range of investments in the 10s to multiple hundreds of millions of dollars from ARM, Coreweave, ScaleAI, DataVita, TechUK, Pathfinder, Salesforce, and Blackstone, among others. They're driving further investment into quantum computing, medicine, space exploration, digital security, and more. As if in anticipation of concerns over power and water usage at the range of new data centers, the UK government also announced new UK and U.S. partnerships over the development of nuclear energy. Under the scheme, companies will be able to acquire licenses to build nuclear reactors faster in the UK. It will also facilitate greater research into the development of commercial fusion power. From a purely economic perspective, it's hard to find fault in all these announcements. Any economy can benefit enormously from tens of billions of dollars of outside investment, and especially when that comes with closer ties to some of the world's most valuable companies, which are all spending big to ensure their own gravy trains keep on rolling. But it's all a delicate balancing act for the UK government. While the news of AI investment is indeed positive for the country from an economic perspective, whether or not these investments turn into tangible, usable resources for the country and its AI efforts remains to be seen. Regardless of the outcome, this scale of planning is exactly what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wants: to build AI infrastructure across the globe.

The US-UK tech prosperity deal carries promise but also peril for the general public

Cardiff Metropolitan University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK. The UK government hailed the recent US state visit as a landmark for the economy. A record £150 billion of inward investment was announced, including £31 billion targeted at artificial intelligence (AI) development. That encompasses work on large language models (LLMs), the technology behind AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and other generative AI models. It will also cover the supercomputing infrastructure needed to deliver innovations. Microsoft alone pledged US$30 billion (about £22 billion) over four years, half on capital expenditure such as new data centres, the rest on operations, research and sales. Tech company Nvidia has also promised £11 billion, with plans to deploy 120,000 of its Blackwell graphics processing units (to speed up computer graphics, for example in games, and process digital images) in UK projects. The US AI cloud computing company CoreWeave is building a £1.5 billion AI data centre in Scotland. The political narrative is that the UK is becoming a global hub for AI. Yet behind the rhetoric lies a harder question: what kind of AI future do we want? Is it one where prosperity is broadly shared among the public, or one where private firms and foreign interests hold the levers of power, while the technology itself stagnates and spreads misinformation? LLMs the technology powering generative AI models such as ChatGPT or Gemini, appear to be reaching their technical limits. The underlying hardware that LLMs are built on are called "transformer architectures", they excel at producing fluent text but have persistent problems with reasoning and fact. Since ChatGPT3.5 arrived in 2022, AI developers have scaled up models with more data and computing power, but gains have slowed and costs have soared. This progress has also failed to solve their key problem, persistent "hallucinations" that are a significant barrier to leveraging LLMs for organisations and individuals. OpenAI admits that hallucinations - confident but false outputs from AI systems - are a product of how these systems predict words. Filtering out hallucinations by forcing models to admit uncertainty in their output could cut hallucinations, but reduces usable outputs by around 30%. Hallucinations may be seen as a necessary downside by OpenAI and other providers, but research also highlights their structural weaknesses. LLMs are not socialised beings but statistical engines, incapable of distinguishing fact from fabrication. My own work has shown that users place misplaced trust in LLMs, assuming human-like reasoning where none exists. Simple logic tests expose weaknesses and the pattern is consistent: AI often underdelivers and requires human oversight to verify outputs. This year, the Grok chatbot, developed by Elon Musk's company xAI, made antisemitic remarks and praised Adolf Hitler in responses on X. The company behind Grok, xAI, apologised and removed the posts, attributing some of the behaviour to an "unauthorised code path" or system update that made the model overly responsive to extremist-tainted user inputs. In its apology published on X, xAI said: "Our intent for Grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users. After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the Grok bot. The company said the update made Grok "susceptible to existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views". They added: "We thank all of the X users who provided feedback to identify the abuse of grok functionality, helping us advance our mission of developing helpful and truth-seeking artificial intelligence." Retrospective alignment All LLMs require retrospective alignment, a process of adjusting their outputs after training, to ensure their responses do not drift into harmful, biased, or destabilising territory. This can mean filtering hate speech, blocking misinformation about vaccines, preventing the promotion of self harm, or constraining political partisanship. But unlike humans, whose ethical boundaries emerge through lived interaction and socialisation, AI models cannot self regulate. Their alignment is imposed after the fact by those that control them. This process is not guaranteed to be neutral and we can never be sure who is actually calling the shots. Corporations, governments and powerful individuals may be in there acting as surrogate parents, embedding their own values and interests into the system's ethical boundaries. The danger here is that instead of aligning the LLM to broadly acceptable norms, it could potentially be aligned to promote undesirable extremist points of view. In fact, malicious coherence, where AI systems are tuned to confidently repeat political narratives, may turn out to be a bigger risk than hallucinations. On X, Grok is already invoked as an arbiter of truth. It's very common to see: "Hey @Grok, is this true?" in the comments under posts. This ritual hands authority to a machine owned by one man. The UK-US trade deal also gestures towards a broader range of machine intelligence applications, from autonomous vehicles and delivery drones to healthcare systems. Self-driving technology has been imminent for more than a decade, but it remains locked in extended pilot phases with Tesla, Waymo and Cruise all facing setbacks and safety controversies. Delivery drones remain constrained by regulation, safety and logistical barriers. There are impressive AI breakthroughs in healthcare, such as protein structure prediction and AI-assisted diagnostic imaging. But deployment in the NHS is fraught with concerns over trust, data governance and accountability. The lesson is the same as with LLMs, progress is real but uneven, hype outpaces evidence, and without transparent oversight these systems risk being aligned more with corporate profit than with public benefit. Whose future? The UK-US trade deal illustrates both the promise and peril of today's AI moment. Technically, AI systems are stagnating: hallucinations persist, reasoning remains weak, and scaling them up further offers diminishing returns. Politically, the risk is sharper: models could be aligned to private or partisan interests, amplifying disinformation in an already fractured information ecosystem. The opportunity to change the truth in real time through alignment fits less with Silicon Valley's promises of innovation than with Orwell's Ministry of Truth. Whether in LLMs that confidently fabricate or in driverless cars that make unfortunate manoeuvres, the pattern repeats: systems promoted as transformative struggle with basic reliability, while control over their direction rests with a handful of powerful firms. So whose AI future do we want? A future of public benefit, built on transparency, oversight, and verifiable outcomes? Or one where private corporations define what counts as truth? The fanfare of investment cannot answer this. Only governance, accountability, and sovereignty can. Without them, the AI future being built in the UK may not belong to its citizens at all, but to the corporations and governments who claim to speak on their behalf.

Microsoft and pals announce cash for AI in the UK

Redmond woos Blighty with cloud and AI infrastructure splurge as Trump comes to town Microsoft appears to have trumped Google's UK datacenter ambitions with a $15 billion investment in cloud and AI infrastructure in the country. The money is part of a $30 billion spending spree between 2025 and 2028, although Microoft has been coy as to exactly where the cash will be spent. Google, on the other hand, has been very clear about where it is building its multibillion-dollar bit barn. The announcement came on the eve of US President Donald Trump's state visit, and Microsoft was keen to highlight its more than four decades of involvement in the US-UK relationship. "Today," the company said, "this alliance enters another new chapter, as we work together to expand access to trusted American technology and strengthen the infrastructure that will drive economic growth and technological advancement in the AI era." The issue of American tech giants in the era of Trump has become vexing for countries on this side of the Atlantic, where efforts are underway at some biz customers to extract themselves from the clutches of the hyperscalers. Such controversies, including Microsoft admitting during a hearing in France that it couldn't guarantee data sovereignty, have not deterred the megacorp. "This marks the largest financial commitment we've ever made in the UK," Microsoft said. "This investment will enable us to build the country's largest supercomputer - with more than 23,000 Nvidia GPUs - in partnership with Nscale." In 2023, Microsoft announced a three-year, £2.5 billion investment in the UK, also aimed at AI infrastructure. Microsoft is not alone in splashing the cash - or at least announcing that it will - in the UK to mark Trump's visit. Nvidia also announced that investment would be headed to Britain. It reiterated Microsoft's supercomputing ambitions, although it put the GPU count as more than 24,000. What's a thousand or so Nvidia GPUs between friends? CoreWeave is to invest another £1.5 billion as part of an initiative to deploy Nvidia GPUs in Scotland. Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said: "Today marks a historic chapter in US-United Kingdom technology collaboration. We are at the big bang of the AI era - and the United Kingdom stands in a Goldilocks position, where world-class talent, research, and industry converge." Mark Boost, CEO of UK cloud vendor Civo, sounded a cautious note, commenting: "Clearly, international investment is vital for our AI industries, and a package of this size will do a huge amount of good for quantum, AI and nuclear projects. However, we should also be building up our homegrown tech ecosystem, and setting harder limits on the extent to which we're willing to allow overseas control of our digital infrastructure. If not, we risk sacrificing our future digital sovereignty on the altar of short-term gains." While it is not clear exactly where the next investment will be directed (other than the aforementioned supercomputer), the UK's infrastructure has struggled to keep up with the demands of tech giant datacenters, particularly in the age of AI. Earlier this year, planning rules were loosened to permit more development, but power generation problems could still slow growth. In May, the UK government stepped in to overturn a local council that refused planning permission. Datacenters are, after all, critical national infrastructure now. Music to the ears of tech giants, judging by the investments, though perhaps less so for locals forced to deal with potential power shortages and the environmental challenges that could come from all that AI and cloud infrastructure development. ®

US tech groups answer Starmer's call for AI infrastructure spending

High energy costs, drawn-out planning processes and an often combative antitrust regulator have not made the UK the world's most popular destination for tech companies looking to build out the vast new data centres needed to power artificial intelligence. Nonetheless, this week Big Tech groups including Microsoft, Google and Nvidia lined up to make multibillion-dollar pledges to build new AI infrastructure across the UK, timed to coincide with US President Donald Trump's state visit. US tech executives such as Nvidia chief Jensen Huang credited the spending splurge on British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer having "internalised the importance of building infrastructure here in the UK". "It was his urgent request that we dedicate resources to the UK to help build AI infrastructure," Huang said. He added that plans by cloud computing start-ups Nscale and CoreWeave to install 120,000 of Nvidia's AI chips across the UK as part of deals with Microsoft and OpenAI were a "very good start". Nvidia is also investing £500mn in London-based Nscale to help the company, which launched as an AI cloud specialist just last year, scale up its operations. Yet this week's agreements leave unresolved points of tension with the Trump administration over the UK's tech regulation, particularly its digital services taxes. No concessions had been made by Starmer and his colleagues to pressure from Washington to scrap the flat-rate 2 per cent digital tax, people close to the government said. The tax hits tech groups including Alphabet, Meta and Amazon and discriminates against the US, Trump has argued. Technology secretary Liz Kendall told the BBC on Wednesday that a change to the levy "wasn't included in this partnership at all". However, she stopped short of confirming that the tax would remain in place in the November budget. Critics of the spending pledges say Britain is opening up a leading IT market to American tech companies for very little in return. "A lot of the deal announced yesterday was mutton dressed as lamb," said Nick Clegg, Meta's former policy chief and former deputy prime minister, describing the UK as a "vassal state technologically". "These companies need to do this anyway . . . It's all one-way traffic," Clegg added. "Generally, the UK has been seen as being more friendly to these companies and that is being rewarded," said Richard Clode, a tech portfolio manager at Janus Henderson. However Brad Smith, Microsoft president, said Britain had become more welcoming to US investors since the company's bruising tussle with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority over its $75bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which closed after a lengthy antitrust review in 2023. "The climate in London today is so much more hospitable to investment than it was a few years ago," said Smith. "For sustained long-term growth of the AI sector in the UK and the economy as a whole, the agenda the government is pushing around permitting and electricity growth are all indispensable." Microsoft said it was making its largest investment in the country -- but $15bn over four years remains a fraction of the $120bn the company plans to spend globally over the next four quarters alone. And notwithstanding the government's drive to speed up planning approvals and access to energy through its AI Growth Zones programme, the obstacles to building large data centres in the UK remain formidable. When consultancy LCP Delta ranked the top six most attractive destinations for data centres internationally, the UK did not make the cut, losing out to cities or states in the US, Singapore, India, Malaysia and Japan. In the UK, electricity costs can run to as much as three times what is available in other parts of the world. Most data centres will be paying 18-28 pence per kilowatt-hour in the UK depending on how they buy their energy, according to Dina Darshini, head of commercial and industrial at LCP Delta, compared to around 8 pence per kilowatt-hour in the Nordics or the US state of Virginia. Delays in connecting to the grid also present a substantial bottleneck. According to estimates by the International Energy Agency, UK developers typically wait five to seven years to connect to the grid, compared with one to three years in the US. But Darshini said the UK remains attractive nonetheless, due to factors such as strong demand from financial hubs, resilient infrastructure, supportive policies and availability of skilled labour. While LCP Delta placed the UK below many international peers, it ranked London as the most attractive destination for data centre investment in Europe, based on factors including the regulatory environment, demand for their services and financing availability. Luisa Mostarda, senior energy consultant in the energy team at estate agent Savills, said data centre owners in the UK can reduce their electricity costs by striking long-term power purchase agreements at a fixed price, or private wire arrangements which can mean lower grid fees. "Private wire arrangements in the UK are definitely some of the easiest compared to other countries," she said. The UK's overall stability also makes it attractive despite grid delays, she added. Smith at Microsoft said it "got a head start" before making its new $15bn AI infrastructure announcement this week by putting energy contracts into place several years ago. The Starmer government has been "clear from day one" that planning and energy bottlenecks were "a challenge they are prepared to take on", said Saul Klein, a London-based tech investor who has also advised several UK governments. "Every economy needs and wants incredible infrastructure for AI compute. That's self-evident," Klein said.

UK and US agree $42 billion tech pact to mark Trump's visit

LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Britain and the United States have agreed a technology pact to boost ties in AI, quantum computing and civil nuclear energy, with top U.S. firms led by Microsoft pledging 31 billion pounds ($42 billion) in UK investments. The "Tech Prosperity Deal" is part of U.S. President Donald Trump's second state visit to Britain, which will include a day of pomp at Windsor Castle on Wednesday, hosted by King Charles and the royal family. Britain said the pact included joint efforts to develop AI models for healthcare, expand quantum computing capabilities and streamline civil nuclear projects. It added that it would support economic growth, scientific research and energy security in both countries. STARMER UNDER PRESSURE TO BOOST ECONOMIC GROWTH British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the deal had the potential to shape the future of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic, and deliver growth and security. The U.S. is Britain's single largest country trading partner, and its big tech companies have already invested billions of dollars in their UK operations. Starmer, under pressure to reverse years of weak economic growth, now wants to pitch Britain as a destination for further investment by opting for the light touch regulation favoured by the United States in areas such as AI, as opposed to the more interventionist approach of the European Union. The Trump administration has criticised European online safety laws and digital taxes, including those in Britain, but they were not part of the discussions over the pact. US TECH FIRMS INVEST IN THE UK Under the deals announced, chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab said it would deploy 120,000 graphics processing units across Britain - its largest rollout in Europe to date. It is working to deploy up to 60,000 Grace Blackwell Ultra chips with UK-based Nscale, which will partner OpenAI in a UK leg of the U.S. company's giant Stargate project and tie-up with Microsoft to establish Britain's largest AI supercomputer. Microsoft said it would invest 22 billion pounds in total to expand cloud and AI infrastructure as well as in the supercomputer, which will be in Loughton, north-east London. Satya Nadella, chair and CEO of Microsoft, said it wanted to ensure that America remained a trusted and reliable tech partner for Britain. Its president, Brad Smith, said relations had improved hugely since the "dark days" before the UK's antitrust regulator dropped its opposition to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, saying he felt "enormously better". David Hogan, vice president for enterprise at Nvidia, told reporters the investments would "truly make the UK an AI maker, not an AI taker". Google announced a 5 billion-pound investment, including a new data centre in Waltham Cross, north of London, and continued support for AI research through its DeepMind project. Cloud computing firm CoreWeave (CRWV.O), opens new tab said its 1.5 billion pound backing would fund energy-efficient data centres in partnership with Scottish firm DataVita, bringing its total UK investment to 2.5 billion pounds. Other firms announcing commitments include Salesforce (CRM.N), opens new tab, Scale AI, BlackRock (BLK.N), opens new tab, Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab, Amazon Web Services (AMZN.O), opens new tab and AI Pathfinder, with investments ranging from hundreds of millions to several billion pounds. ($1 = 0.7336 pounds) Reporting by Sam Tabahriti and Paul Sandle. Additional reporting by Steve Holland in London and Jeffrey Dastin San Francisco. Editing by Mark Potter Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence Sam Tabahriti Thomson Reuters Sam Tabahriti is a UK breaking news correspondent covering general and political news for Reuters. He has over five years of experience covering general news and three years covering business and legal news. He is also a keen cyclist and photography enthusiast.

Microsoft announces $30 billion investment in AI infrastructure, operations in UK

LONDON -- Microsoft said on Tuesday that it plans to invest $30 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the U.K. by 2028. The investment includes $15 billion in capital expenditures and $15 billion in its U.K. operations, Microsoft said. The company said the investment would enable it to build the U.K.'s "largest supercomputer," with more than 23,000 advanced graphics processing units, in partnership with Nscale, a British cloud computing firm. The spending commitment comes as President Donald Trump embarks on a state visit to Britain. Trump arrived in the U.K. Tuesday evening and is set to be greeted at Windsor Castle on Wednesday by King Charles and Queen Camilla. During his visit, all eyes are on U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is under pressure to bring stability to the country after the exit of Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner over a house tax scandal and a major cabinet reshuffle. On a call with reporters on Tuesday, Microsoft President Brad Smith said his stance on the U.K. has warmed over the years. He previously criticized the country over its attempt in 2023 to block the tech giant's $69 billion acquisition of video game developer Activision-Blizzard. The deal was cleared by the U.K.s competition regulator later that year. "I haven't always been optimistic every single day about the business climate in the U.K.," Smith said. However, he added, "I am very encouraged by the steps that the government has taken over the last few years." "Just a few years ago, this kind of investment would have been inconceivable because of the regulatory climate then and because there just wasn't the need or demand for this kind of large AI investment," Smith said. Starmer and Trump are expected to sign a new deal Wednesday "to unlock investment and collaboration in AI, Quantum, and Nuclear technologies," the government said in a statement late Tuesday.

How US-UK tech deal could yield significant benefits for the British public - expert Q&A

King's College London provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK. A £150 billion technology prosperity deal between the US and the UK was announced during President Donald Trump's recent state visit to the UK. But what kinds of technologies could it advance and how will these benefit the British public? The Conversation asked Dr Dan Nicolau, who researches the interface of biology and computing, medical science and artificial intelligence (AI), at King's College London for his thoughts. AI has been the focus of this deal, but what other technologies could it benefit? It's a large amount of money, even for a wealthy medium-sized country like the UK. The big unknown is whether the various technical challenges associated with these technologies are overcome. It's a big bet. It's important if you want to see big economic benefits over the next ten years, say. Those challenges include hallucinations by AI, where they invent information. The other thing relates to whether we have enough electricity. The government could build nuclear power plants. But that's a big commitment over many years. It's also not totally clear that some of these tech advances directly translate to economic growth. There's a quantum computing component to this deal and it's directed towards developing lots of new medicinal drugs. It's not completely clear that if you had 100 new drugs for cancer that you would have the capacity to do the clinical trials to see that they worked. Maybe AI can accelerate the clinical trials but all of this is a big question mark. It's a big bet that we can solve these problems in three to four years so we can get some economic growth over the next ten years. Occasionally, there is some big breakthrough with quantum computing. Last year, Google announced that it had built a processor that drastically reduces the errors that quantum computers are prone to. But it's not clear that running quantum computers at very cold temperatures or scaling or reducing the error rates translate into concrete breakthroughs. It might do, but it's a little bit of a gamble. We don't necessarily know if we'll have answers in the next five years, but I think we'll know a lot more in the next two. Of the potential technologies, such as self-driving cars, drones and advanced chips, which could yield real benefits to people? The question is about timescale. If I knew that I had a drug that could cure breast cancer or lung cancer, say. Even if I could prove that scientifically, it would be ten years before anyone could receive that drug. That's because I'd have to publish the paper, it would have to be tested in mice, then clinical trials in humans. In other areas, like for example, accounting, planning, contracts in law - all of that stuff, things can be done now. Some things can be done so much faster, it's hard to imagine there wouldn't be major economic impact in two years. Because AI tools are able to accelerate writing computer code, I think that's an area where we'd see half of code, maybe, being automated in the next two years. Whether that's good for people in coding jobs, let's see. With drones, there are a couple of challenges - they can't operate alone so they need constant human supervision. We're working on a project where we're trying to upload a fly brain into a drone. The fly already knows how to fly so if you put its brain into a drone, the drone will be able to fly on its own. AI tools can really help with that and making cheap, genuinely autonomous drones and other things like mini submarines for example. Also, drones can only operate for short periods of time. So if AI tools were able to help them recharge on their own or share tasks, they could go from something that's used by hobbyists and the military to self-driving cars, drug delivery to people at home, all of that stuff becomes much much easier. It opens up infrastructure development for drones, like highways in the sky specifically for drones. The potential economic openings are huge, but each of them has a question mark over them. How likely is it that some of these problems can be overcome, do you think? The billion pound question. With the hallucination problem with AI, there is no viable solution on the horizon. There are lots of patches and some of them are quite clever. We don't understand the reason hallucinations are happening because it's a science problem and there are hardly any scientists working on it. OpenAI has 100 scientists in that team and 1,000 engineers. Google is the same. The engineers can't fix it because it's not an engineering problem. But it's wider than that. LLMs will provide answers based on the data that they've been fed, but they're missing common sense. Until these problems are solved they're not going to be able to operate without loads of human oversight.

Will the US tech bromance turn around the UK economy?

Porat is one of the most connected business leaders in the world, born in Manchester, and a regular on presidential trade missions. While she stressed the "profound opportunity" for the UK, she also said there was "work to do". But amid the upbeat talk, a surprising attack on the array of US investment came from former Deputy PM and Facebook senior executive Sir Nick Clegg. Britain was "clinging on to the coattails of Uncle Sam" with "crumbs from the Silicon Valley table". "Not only do we import all their technology, we export all our good people and good ideas as well," he said. While there was no explicit quid pro quo in terms of digital taxes or changes to the online safety bill in the Tech Prosperity Deal signed this week, it is clear that the UK has a degree of soft alignment with the US administration's approach, especially when it comes to AI. Lutnick explained to the start-up audience that he scrapped Biden-era AI Safety initiatives in favour of "leaning forward" on the technology. The UK government has mirrored some of these moves. The big picture here is that even the three US giants that put in the lion's share of the tech investment last week are now worth $9tn on US stock markets. They are ready to some shopping, and considerable sums are coming to the UK. The plan is that the Silicon Valley stardust will be sprinkled on the scientific Golden Triangle of Oxford-Cambridge-London - "and don't forget the Open University in Milton Keynes", said Kyle. So what of the familiar lament of losing our best technology and not being able to grow the biggest companies in the world? DeepMind might be considered an example of that in one way. It was bought by Google for £400m in 2014. Another way to look at it, however, is that the new appreciation for the tech giant is partly because of London-based Deepmind's research into all aspects of frontier technology. The recent surge in its share value to above $3tn is rooted in a perception that it is no longer lagging behind in the AI race. Chip designer Arm Holdings is the other UK champion that was sold off to foreign ownership. Its technology is central to the chips in almost all smartphones, including iPhones. There are suggestions that Arm may look at manufacturing its own chips, as the West looks to de-risk supply chains. It is sometimes forgotten that Huang was very close to buying Arm Holdings in 2022, before regulatory authorities investigated the deal on competition grounds under the previous Conservative government. When I raised this with Huang, he sighed: "Don't remind me... I tried". Despite important foundational work in this area being done by the previous government, under Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, it is clear that this company felt burnt by its treatment, and were delighted to engage when Kyle turned up in his T-shirt in Silicon Valley last year. This may, however, point to the eventual consequence of this UK-tech bromance. It may help explain the "pro-growth" direction given to regulators, including the firing of the chair of the CMA in January. This flood of US capital thinks it is getting a safe and secure home in the UK, at least, safer than anywhere else in Europe. The consequences could be the UK economy becomes a tech laboratory for the world, or perhaps mainly the US giants. The state visit certainly seemed to have an undertone of the UK joining forces with the US in a long term AI tech battle with China. Huang said this was not a "zero sum game". "President Trump wants to win and so does President Xi. Its possible they both can." So on its own terms, this week showed the government successfully attracting significant investment that will help grow the economy. That does not solve the immediate challenges in the public finances, for example, ahead of the Budget. The US, even San Francisco for example, can show that tech-fuelled booms often leave many others behind. There are obvious questions about the widespread rollout of AI already impacting certain industries, and entry-level graduate jobs. Before AI becomes a mass creator of jobs, it will visibly cost those of clerks, junior accountants, paralegals, and creatives. But the biggest boost might be a sense of optimism created for the UK. The UK is now all in on AI. Britain will become increasingly dependent on this US tech. But the US giants, at the same time, need British knowhow. It could come to define the economy and the country for decades to come.

Trump's Visit to U.K. Includes Billions in New Tech Deals

President Trump's visit to Britain this week is being used by some of America's biggest tech companies to announce more than $40 billion in investments for artificial intelligence, data centers and other new technologies. Microsoft said it would invest about $30 billion in Britain over four years, including developing a new supercomputer with the British company Nscale. Google said it was opening a new data center as part of a two-year investment worth about $6.8 billion. OpenAI and the semiconductor company Nvidia are developing a new A.I. data center called Stargate UK with Nscale. Mr. Trump's two-day state visit, hosted by King Charles III, is following a similar script as his May trip to the Persian Gulf. In the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, Mr. Trump met with government officials and members of their royal families while helping forge business deals involving American tech companies. Mr. Trump is expected to be joined in Britain by tech executives, including Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Sam Altman of OpenAI. This week's deals strengthen the economic and technological ties between the United States and Britain three months after the countries reached a trade deal. The agreement "marks a generational step change in our relationship with the U.S.," Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said in a statement. Microsoft, Google and others have been expanding in Europe even as countries in the region become more concerned about dependence on American tech companies for key services. European officials have sought assurances from American firms about the protection of data and the storage of information in data centers in Europe. British officials said the announcements this week will help create 5,000 jobs and expand research in areas like A.I., quantum computing, drug discovery and nuclear energy. The deals will bring Britain about 120,000 of Nvidia's advanced semiconductors that are needed for A.I. development, which the government said will be the biggest supply in Europe to date.

Microsoft will invest $30B in the U.K. by 2028 to fuel AI infrastructure and country's largest supercomputer

Microsoft plans to invest $30 billion in the United Kingdom over the next three years, including $15 billion in capital expenditures for AI infrastructure buildouts. The Redmond tech giant revealed the investment as President Donald Trump visits the U.K. this week. The investment will grow Microsoft's data center footprint in the U.K. and also help build what it calls "the country's largest supercomputer" in partnership with Nscale. It's the latest sign of Microsoft's appetite to expand its cloud and AI capacity. The company said in July that it planned to invest more than $30 billion in capital expenditures in the current quarter, a record high. Microsoft said this is the company's largest-ever commitment to the U.K. It employs 6,000 people in the country. "As AI reshapes industries and unlocks new possibilities, we believe that trusted American technology -- built on principles of security, transparency, and responsibility -- can help empower UK institutions and businesses to lead with confidence," Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in a blog post. "And in doing so, we're investing in a partnership that continues to deliver opportunity, innovation and impact in both directions." Smith had criticized U.K. regulators in the past over the company's acquisition of video game behemoth Activision but later softened his stance after the deal was approved. Google also made its own U.K. investment announcement on Tuesday, committing nearly $7 billion over two years.

US tech giants pledge billions for UK AI infrastructure during Trump visit

US tech giants including Microsoft, Nvidia, Google and OpenAI said they would together invest tens of billions of pounds to build computing infrastructure in the UK, as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer hailed a new tech alliance with President Donald Trump. The largest commitment comes from Microsoft, which plans to invest $30bn in artificial intelligence in the four years to 2028, about half of which will go towards cloud and AI infrastructure in Britain. That includes backing construction of the UK's largest supercomputer with 23,000 AI chips, agreeing a long-term leasing contract with London-based data centre company Nscale. Trump landed in the UK late on Tuesday night as part of an unprecedented second state visit to the UK, as the prime minister tries to bolster the relationship at a time when the president has threatened to pull back from Europe. Starmer said on Tuesday that his new tech deal with Trump marked a "decisive step towards the UK becoming a world leader in AI". UK officials have likened increased co-operation between London and Washington in areas such as AI, quantum computing and nuclear energy as the start of a new "special relationship" akin to the one the UK has long tried to foster in defence and security. "A few years ago this investment would have been inconceivable because of the regulatory climate," said Microsoft president Brad Smith, referring to the company's protracted $75bn takeover of Activision Blizzard that was held up by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority. The investments also mark a turnaround for Starmer after Nvidia chief Jensen Huang chided the British prime minister on stage at London Tech Week in June for the country's "surprising" lack of AI infrastructure, lagging behind the rest of Europe. On Tuesday, Nvidia said Microsoft and other customers would collectively deploy 120,000 of its latest Blackwell AI chips -- which are estimated to cost upwards of $30,000 each -- in the UK by the end of next year, creating the largest such cluster in Europe. "The United Kingdom stands in a Goldilocks position, where world-class talent, research and industry converge," Huang said. A host of US tech leaders are expected to participate in the visit, including Huang, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Microsoft's Satya Nadella. Trump said as he left the White House the trip was "primarily" to spend time with King Charles and Queen Camilla, but added he was looking to improve trade ties. Starmer is hoping Trump will make permanent a 25 per cent tariff on all British steel exports -- half the 50 per cent charged on exports from other countries -- although not the 0 per cent rate originally agreed for a certain quota of goods in the US-UK trade deal. "They want to see if they can refine the trade deal a little bit," Trump said. "We made a deal and it's a great deal, and I'm into helping them." As part of the package of tech announcements unveiled on Tuesday night, OpenAI said it planned to build data centre infrastructure to support its Stargate project, including working with Nscale to build a facility in a new "AI Growth Zone" in the north-east of England. Nvidia said Nscale and CoreWeave, another US cloud provider specialising in AI data centres, would together be deploying more than £11bn worth of computing power for AI. The figure includes thousands of Nvidia chips Nscale plans to deploy outside the UK. Earlier on Tuesday, Google said it planned to spend £5bn over the next two years in the UK, which is home to many of its AI unit DeepMind's top researchers. Keegan McBride, senior policy adviser on tech and geopolitics at the Tony Blair Institute, said the UK-US alliance was a "breakthrough moment" for Britain's ambitions to be a leader in deploying AI and applying it to industries such as healthcare. "The deal is a first of its kind with the US and cements a true 'tech special relationship'," McBride said. But the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a tech trade group, said the deal left "vital work to be done to address outstanding concerns" from the Trump administration over the UK's online safety rules, competition enforcement and digital services tax.

Microsoft plans $30 billion investment for UK ahead of Trump state visit

Sept 16 (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab is planning to invest more than $30 billion in its UK operations and artificial intelligence infrastructure over the next four years, the software maker said on Tuesday, ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's second state visit to Britain. In the plan, Microsoft will expand its UK capital expenditures by $15.5 billion and bring 23,000 advanced AI chips to the UK, company President Brad Smith told reporters. The UK business climate has improved in the past few years, Smith said, after the country's antitrust regulator dropped opposition to Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition in 2023. Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Leslie Adler Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

The tech prosperity deal is huge. But will the UK reap the benefits?

University of Salford provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK. The much-lauded UK-US tech deal landed to coincide with President Donald Trump's state visit to the UK. It has been dubbed the "tech prosperity deal", but who, exactly, is set to prosper? After all, the deal will make the UK more reliant on US tech and may hasten the embedding of US artificial intelligence (AI) throughout the UK economy. Having said all that, it is a significant investment by a variety of US firms in the UK. Headline announcements include a £10 billion commitment from private equity firm Blackstone supporting an AI growth zone in the north-east of England; Palantir to invest up to £1.5 billion to help make the UK a defence innovation leader, a £22 billion commitment from Microsoft (with half of this for capital expenditure for AI and cloud services); and an £11 billion injection into the UK economy from chip maker Nvidia. Further announcements include CoreWeave (a data centre company) investing £1.5 billion in UK data centre sites, software firm Salesforce investing £1.4 billion in the UK; Google's parent company Alphabet investing £5 billion in AI; and further investment from Nvidia in UK AI startups. A record-breaking £150 billion of investment has been announced in total. All of this is also expected to bring forward billions of pounds of investment into nuclear energy to power this tech explosion. Read more: Can the UK fast-track nuclear power without cutting corners on safety? It's impressive stuff - investment at the size and scale to make a difference. It is clear that the UK government sees AI as a way to bring jobs, productivity and economic growth. From the government's perspective, AI is a panacea for the UK's economic woes. This deal signals confidence in the UK's tech sector. Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang has predicted that the country will become an "AI superpower", noting that the UK has the expertise and research facilities to excel. But he added that what is currently missing from the UK is the infrastructure. This deal could build that. It could be that the puzzle pieces are slotting into place. The UK's world-leading research and expertise, long hamstrung by the lack of infrastructure is finally getting the boost it needs. AI is boom and bust in nature, but these long-term strategic investments should outlast an AI hype cycle. Money in people's pockets? However, a thriving AI tech sector does not automatically translate to Prime Minister Keir Starmer's promise to put more money in people's pockets and spread the economic and employment benefits across the UK. Even those high up in the industry concede that capturing the upside of the AI boom is not guaranteed. Many of the announcements are of investment that the AI firms need to make. They could invest in other countries - these firms need data centres and are building them globally - and so capturing the investment for the UK is an achievement. There is a sense that Trump's state visit has allowed the firms to garner US political capital by promising UK investment at the same time. The UK's technology secretary Liz Kendall has said the deal did not include guarantees on scrapping a tax for big tech or on copyright for AI companies. But on the other hand, is this the same as guaranteeing the tax won't be scrapped or watered down? The Trump administration has argued that the UK's new Online Safety Act (which obliges tech companies to protect users from harmful content) and its digital services tax erode free speech rights and unfairly target American tech giants. And the UK's former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, also a former executive at Facebook parent company Meta, has argued that the deal will simply make the UK more reliant on US technology. The UK, he has argued, will be "defanged" as it is not building its own AI capacity. Indeed, these considerable investments show US companies harnessing the latent potential (and ownership) of UK artificial intelligence. For example the announcements also include Huang's £500 million equity stake in NScale - a UK cloud computing company - which he predicts will have revenues of up to £50 billion over the next six years. Of course those who invest and take the risk should get their returns. But if AI is seen as the technology to revitalise the UK economy, and if the prime minister's AI Opportunities Action Plan talks of sovereign AI, should this investment not come from the UK itself? The same could be said for much of the capital investment that has been announced. Data centres may have significant environmental costs - certainly questions are being asked about their water usage and burden on the grid. US ownership of these facilities could leave the UK dealing with the negatives and not receiving maximum benefits from the returns. And will they create long-term employment for the regions that may suffer the impacts? The evidence is mixed. Data centres certainly create jobs in their construction (some are very large indeed and they are generally getting bigger). But once they are operational they need far fewer staff. The US-UK tech deal may take the UK a step closer to achieving its tech ambitions. But even if it does become an AI superpower, the country will need to do more if it really wants to feel the widespread benefits.

The UK's £31bn tech deal with the US might sound great - but the government has to answer these questions | Matt Davies

The big firms making these pledges are not charities. We know there will be a quid pro quo; we just don't know what it is yet Peter Kyle, until two weeks ago the technology secretary, once warned that tech companies such as Meta, Google and Microsoft were so powerful that the UK needed to approach them with "a sense of statecraft" and "humility", and treat negotiations with them similarly to diplomacy between nations. That vision endures in the form of the UK-US tech prosperity agreement struck this week. While officially a new bilateral partnership, this seems to be a deal aimed at facilitating investment from US technology companies rather than advancing collaboration on goals such as AI safety, copyright protections for British rights holders or a digital services tax. The rationale is clear: US firms stand alone atop the global AI value chain, making the country an obvious partner for a UK government seeking to "turbocharge" its AI sector. Against a challenging economic backdrop, the promise of "a combined £31bn" in support for UK AI infrastructure such as datacentres offers welcome headlines. The potential challenges are nonetheless also pronounced. We know that the public harbours concerns about the motivation of these companies and their increasing entanglement with the British state. And they may reasonably have questions about this deal, too: in particular the quid pro quo that comes with investment from big tech. The firms making these pledges are not charities, and it remains unclear what local communities in areas such as Blyth, in Northumberland, will see in exchange for offering up their land and grid capacity. In the US itself, datacentre developments have led to rising energy bills and disrupted water supplies while supporting remarkably few jobs. It is unsurprising, then, that existing plans for a new "hyperscale" datacentre in Buckinghamshire have encountered local opposition and legal pushback. To ensure its new "AI growth zones" are not beset by similar controversy, government will need to provide assurances that energy resources and other assets staked for private investment will produce returns for local economies - and to the public purse - rather than just powering profits abroad. Then there is the opportunity cost associated with prioritising US tech over domestic alternatives. Liz Kendall, Kyle's successor as technology secretary, has described the new partnership as a "vote of confidence in Britain's booming AI sector", although few of the companies involved are based - let alone owned - in Britain. Investment from US companies does not need to be zero-sum, but without deft management it risks crowding out any green shoots of growth in the UK's own tech sector. Entrenching reliance on US technologies at the most lucrative parts of the AI value chain would leave UK firms to fight over the leftovers. It's true that the UK lacks the scale and resource advantages of the US, and therefore the ability to participate in cutting-edge AI development on its own: from this perspective, US investment is essential. Yet our international peers - from the EU's "EuroStack" movement to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's Brazil - have charted alternative paths to bolster sovereign capabilities and create the conditions for domestic tech firms, small and medium-sized enterprises and truly public alternatives to flourish. All of this is downstream of the most important issue: what is the government's vision for AI beyond doing it bigger and faster? There is too often an implicit assumption that AI will be socially and economically transformative, with the suggestion that "millions of patients could receive life-saving treatments faster" only the latest in a series of ill-defined and poorly evidenced claims. The subtext is that the promised land is in sight - but that only the investments and regulatory changes demanded by large technology companies will get us there. This, however, is precisely backwards: policymakers should instead consider what AI could tangibly achieve for people and society, and from there ask what technological investments are necessary. When the question is posed in this way, the answers seem less obviously congenial to the profit margins of the largest incumbent firms. There may, for instance, be substantial public value to be squeezed out of previous-generation foundation models, which are far less costly to procure and run. The success of China's DeepSeek demonstrates the potential for the UK of a "fast follower" model whereby instead of begging for scraps from big tech's table, we wait and see what innovations will yield the most value, and pursue cost-effective ways of doing it ourselves. Achieving this will involve the canny use of public resources to pluralise AI research and build independent capacity. The good news for our new secretary of state is that the seeds of this agenda already exist. The government's sovereign AI unit could be tasked with supporting alternative research paradigms. Public compute and data resources such as the new AI Research Resource and National Data Library could implement access policies that favour smaller organisations, public entities and nonprofits. To ensure that public subsidies are not simply hoovered up by big tech, measures could also be taken to reduce talent and intellectual property drain and predatory corporate partnerships, with robust regulatory action encouraged when necessary. None of this is to say that government should abandon collaboration with the US, or with US tech companies. But cautionary tales from around the world abound in which lofty - and sincere - appeals to public good have served to underwrite big tech profits. Preventing this from happening will require vision, careful design and, yes, statecraft: construed not as deference but as the requisite skill and guile to deliver for the national interest.

Tech pours money into U.K. AI as Trump visits

Why it matters: The Trump administration wants allies to make American tech the backbone of their AI infrastructure -- and these deals could lock in that path for the U.K. Driving the news: Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday will sign a tech partnership focused on AI and quantum computing, as well as a deal to increase the sources of low-cost electricity needed for AI. * Nvidia's Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Microsoft's Satya Nadella are joining the president during his state visit, per people familiar. The deals announced include: * Microsoft is investing $30 billion from 2025 through 2028. That includes $15 billion in capital expenditures to build out the U.K.'s cloud and AI infrastructure, as well as plans for the country's largest supercomputer in partnership with Nscale. * Nvidia, OpenAI and Nscale are joining forces for a data center infrastructure project dubbed "Stargate UK." Nvidia is also making investments into quantum computing and upskilling workers in the AI robotics space. * Separately, CoreWeave is investing $2 billion in the U.K., partnering with Nvidia and data center operator DataVita in Scotland to deploy Nvidia's most advanced chips. The bottom line: The White House gets to claim the investments as Trump's AI victories, while these companies are able to make major inroads into the U.K. market. Sign up for Axios AI+ Government, our new Friday newsletter focusing on how governments encourage, regulate and use AI.

Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, OpenAI and others pledge $42 billion in U.K. AI investment | Fortune

U.S. President Donald Trump touched down in the United Kingdom on Tuesday for an unprecedented second state visit. He was accompanied by American tech CEOs, who pledged $42.3 billion worth of investments in U.K. AI projects. The investments from major players, including Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, and OpenAI, are part of a sweeping £31 billion ($42.3 billion) "Tech Prosperity Deal," aimed at building out the UK's AI infrastructure, funding data center projects and computer chips. The bulk of this investment comes from Microsoft, which unveiled a plan to spend almost $30 billion (£22 billion) over the next four years. The investment package is the company's largest outside the U.S. and is separate from OpenAI's recent announcement of a smaller, U.K.-based version of Stargate. At the heart of the company's push is a supercomputer in Essex, which will house over 23,000 GPUs in partnership with British-based AI infrastructure company Nscale, a project that CEO Satya Nadella says could accelerate the UK's economic growth by 10% within just five years. "As we make these investments, we are guided by a clear and bold vision, ensuring that both the United States and the United Kingdom remain at the forefront of cloud and AI innovation," Nadella said in a video statement. According to the company, $15.5 billion would be spent on capital investments, such as the data center project, while a further $15.1 billion would be directed towards maintaining and growing its U.K. operations. Microsoft President Brad Smith said during a Tuesday press briefing that the company already had contracts in place or had pre-purchased the electricity needed to power the new data centers it plans to build. "We will be good for every cent of this investment," Smith said in the press briefing. "We care about British pounds, not empty tech promises." Microsoft isn't the only U.S. company committing to major AI infrastructure investments in U.K. Google pledged $6.8 billion for AI research and infrastructure, which includes a new $1 billion AI data center that is set to open this week, and more funding for research at Google DeepMind, its advanced AI lab that continues to be headquartered in London. DeepMind co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis celebrated the investment as demonstrating "the strength of the US-U.K. partnership." "Combining the unique strengths of both countries will help to ensure our scientists continue to lead on the breakthroughs and innovations that will define the future. In particular, we look forward to working with both governments to advise on how scientists can harness the latest AI tools, as well as building on our partnership with the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority to advance fusion energy research in the US and the U.K.," Hassabis said in a post on LinkedIn. U.S. chip giant Nvidia also pledged to contribute up to £11 billion ($15 billion) for what it calls the largest AI infrastructure rollout in U.K. history. The company plans to use the investment to build out new UK "AI factories." The chipmaker will also partner with UK.-based Nscale to build data centers containing up to 300,000 Grace Blackwell GPUs worldwide, including up to 60,000 will be deployed physically in the U.K. The number includes GPUs Nvidia is supplying as part of the Microsoft-Nscale project as well as GPUs it will be supplying to OpenAI's new Stargate U.K. project, a scaled-down version of its $500 billion plan to build new AI data centers for running and training ultra-large AI models in the U.S. Beyond the Stargate AI initiative, Nvidia is also expanding into quantum, working with Oxford Quantum Circuits to build a quantum-GPU AI supercomputing centre, while teaming with techUK to launch an R&D hub aimed at advancing Britain's AI and robotics ecosystem. In the northeast of the country, the U.K. government has designated a new "AI growth zone" expected to deliver more than 5,000 jobs and billions in private capital, including the Stargate UK project. That project will start with 8,000 GPUs in 2026, scaling to 31,000, powered by Nvidia's Grace Blackwell chips. CEO Sam Altman said the initiative will accelerate scientific breakthroughs and productivity, while the new OpenAI Academy aims to help upskill 7.5 million workers by 2030. "By teaming up with world-class companies from both the U.K. and US, we're laying the foundations for a future where together we are world leaders in the technology of tomorrow, creating highly skilled jobs, putting more money in people's pockets and ensuring this partnership benefits every corner of the United Kingdom," British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement. The investments and partnerships with major U.S. tech firms are a significant vote of confidence in U.K.-based Nscale from tech leaders across the pond. Founded in 2018, Nscale is a U.K.-based AI infrastructure company specializing in large-scale data centers and high-performance computing for AI workloads. However, in the U.K., some are concerned that the implicit qui pro quo for all of this investment will be the British government agreeing to a light-touch when it comes to AI regulation and policing Big Tech in general. Unlike the European Union, the U.K. -- much like the U.S. -- currently has almost no AI-specific national regulation. In addition, the Trump Administration has complained that the U.K.'s newly-enacted Online Safety Act as well as its Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, as well as its Digital Services Tax, which came into force in 2020, unfairly target American tech giants and represents an erosion of free speech rights. Longer term, there are broader AI "sovereignty" concerns around the U.K. government and defense sector becoming increasingly reliant on U.S. technology and investment. A shift in U.S. policy or a deterioration in the bilateral relationship, for example, could make it difficult for Britain to pursue an independent approach to AI or broader foreign affairs. The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a tech trade group, told the Financial Times that there was still "vital work to be done" to resolve outstanding issues highlighted by the Trump administration regarding the UK's online safety rules, competition enforcement, and digital services tax.

Shiny new AI data centers and duller questions - what could possibly go wrong?

In the wake of Trump's arrival in the UK, major US AI companies have announced tens of billions of dollars in new AI investments for developing more and better AI capabilities in the UK. According to this narrative, the UK will gain the largest UK-based AI supercomputer ever built, numerous additional AI data centers, increased job opportunities, and substantial financial benefits - unless it doesn't. US Companies, including Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI, CoreWeave, Scale AI, BlackRock and AI Pathfinder, have all announced support for this 'Special Relationship'. NVIDIA alone plans to deploy 120,000 high-end GPUs across Britain, which is the largest deployment in Europe to date. UK-based Nscale plans to deploy half of these to support OpenAI's ambitions to build Britain's largest AI supercomputer. Advocates claim that this will support economic growth, scientific research, and energy security in both the US and UK, thanks to innovations in healthcare, quantum computing, and streamlined nuclear projects. What could possibly go wrong? A lot actually - like higher water and power bills, more piles of radioactive pollution, loss of data sovereignty, and more efficient wealth extraction schemes. A great deal is at stake in determining how this investment can be leveraged to foster growth in environmental, human, and social capital. One big question that seems to be glossed over in the rush to build more data centers is who or what will be subsidizing the costs of the power that goes into or the heat that comes out. Also, what can be done to reduce the slow permit approval processes and relatively high construction costs compared to other markets? The power infrastructure conversation generally seems to get glossed over in the excitement on the road to AI data center nirvana. A large data center can easily consume more power than a small city. This could mean more carbon-emitting fossil fuel plants or perhaps a lot more wind and solar that no one wants to see blighting their view. This also means building a lot more power lines that no one wants to see, either. The US AI industry has a handy wealth extraction scheme where it leaves these grid connection costs up to consumer rate payers. The same approach is also being tested for subsidizing the water infrastructure costs required for cooling these data centers. This kind of thinking will surely be tested by existing water management challenges in the UK. Small modular nuclear reactors are being proposed as one way to mitigate the power and grid requirements of new data centers. They could be built on-site and don't emit air pollution or greenhouse gases. They might also be safer than traditional nuclear plants. Except no one has figured out how to safely and durably dispose of the nuclear waste from the current facilities, much less the new ones. Some estimates suggest that these could generate anywhere from two to thirty times as much nuclear waste as traditional nuclear plants per watt of power. Newer nuclear designs will also require new processing techniques due to the use of novel materials and designs. What's more, the construction costs of SMRs are coming in at significantly more than expected. The cost of NuScale's first US SMR surged from $5.3 to $9.3 billion before it terminated the project. Estimates place the average levelized cost of energy at $200 per megawatt hour compared to $45 to $74 for gas, $26 to $50 for wind, and $59 to $91 for rooftop solar. All of these should leave regulators and ratepayers wondering if the UK's data center capacity can scale quickly and sustainably enough to meet the demand. Konstantin Hartmann, Managing Director, EMEA, at NTT Global Data Centres, argues in a statement: As the industry scales to meet this demand, sustainability must remain front and center. Major builds will and should face scrutiny from media, regulators, and communities. Another concern is how this partnership will balance the UK's more stringent data protections with the more permissive move fast and fix things later attitude favored by US firms. Mark Boost, CEO of UK-based cloud and AI provider Civo, says in a statement that while tech investment is always welcome, this deal ultimately takes another step towards surrendering the UK's digital sovereignty: Any investment into our tech sector is worth celebrating, and will help accelerate the AI ambitions of countless British businesses. That said, even though the 'Tech Prosperity Deal' is an impressive deal with a catchy name, I have to question which side is prospering more. If the UK isn't careful, sooner or later, the majority of our critical AI infrastructure will be owned by Big Tech. The US Cloud Act means none of the 'Big Three' providers can offer true digital sovereignty, leaving British businesses and public bodies completely at the mercy of American data laws. That said, this could also represent an opportunity to combine the UK's traditional strengths in scientific research, transparency, collaboration, and social benefit with America's strengths in financial engineering and digital innovation. This middle ground will require investing as much in people, trustworthy data infrastructure, new processes, and physical AI as in the shiny new data centers that tend to hog all of the photo ops. One ray of hope is Salesforce's strategy for investing in the R&D and talent required to cultivate local AI skills and capabilities. Another ray of hope is that the significant investment in UK operators like Nscale might also help UK engineers collaborate on more efficient data centers and construction processes that could guide better practices worldwide. Additionally, there is an opportunity to leverage the UK's extensive scientific expertise in the next phase of physical AI tools and processes, which can improve efficiency, design more cost-effective power plants and batteries, and potentially streamline regulatory and permitting processes by utilizing more advanced digital twins. These kinds of things might benefit from Nvidia's UK R&D investments in applying AI to material innovation, electrostatic chemistry, data center digital twins, pollution models, and better training tools. Perhaps some of this will translate into more sustainable nuclear fusion power plants that produce less radioactive waste per watt. It may also reduce the need for freshwater or support new approaches to quickly and cost-effectively rewiring the grid with higher capacity upgrades. Allan Kaye, director of Manchester-based data center specialist Vespertec, argues in a statement that the US investment could clearly give the UK a leg up. Still, it's important to recognize the need to proceed carefully: It's vital that we work with our US partners on an equal footing to build up British AI, rather than just becoming more real estate for American data centers. There is a path forward that ensures the rising tide of AI lifts ships on both sides of the Atlantic, so we need to work with our US partners to make sure that's the path we're pursuing in the future. My take The prospect of billions of dollars in new investments and shiny new data centers makes for good press releases. Building a large number of data centers may create numerous short-term construction jobs. However, the bigger opportunity will be figuring out how to grow the talent pipeline and developing the physical AI tools and processes that translate into more sustainable and trustworthy AI, which in turn generates even bigger gains in the long run.

Trump state visit is all about deals to turn around UK economy

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player For Donald Trump, today was primarily about one thing. Before boarding Air Force One to make the transatlantic flight to the UK, he told reporters on the White House Lawn: "It's to be with Prince Charles and Camilla, they're friends of mine for a long time... you're going to have some great pictures, it's going to be a beautiful event." Britain delivered. After a military welcome, lunch with the King and Queen and a Red Arrows flypast, the president has already got more than enough photographs to admire on the plane back home. Luckily, pomp and circumstance is something we do well. Money latest: Did Oasis tour impact inflation? But this was not an altruistic display. These things rarely are. As British governments have done in the past, the Starmer team leveraged Britain's soft power to advance its own aims. Beyond the fanfare, Starmer wants to catch the president's ear on foreign policy issues, including Gaza and Ukraine. But they are also there to talk money: investment and trade. On trade, we faltered. The US refused to budge on its 25% tariff imposed on the aluminium and steel Industry (a reminder perhaps that no amount of tea with the King will get the US to act against its interests). But in the arena of investment the British government is already declaring victory. Trump arrived in Britain along with a who's who of the US tech scene. Jensen Huang, chief executive of the AI chipmaker Nvidia, Apple's Tim Cook, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, and Sam Altman of OpenAI all made the journey over. Today, they are attending a state dinner at Windsor Castle along with the president but they had other reasons for coming too. Many of them were here to announce major investments, running into the tens of billions of pounds, to build AI data centres in the UK under a new US-UK tech deal. Trump state visit latest: These are private investments but the government is viewing them as a win for Starmer. His administration is - like the one before it and the one before that- scrambling to unlock economic growth in the UK. It is pinning its hopes on the transformational promise of AI. The prospect of greater economic growth, productivity and jobs is an alluring one for Britain and, indeed, most of western Europe's ailing economies. The hope is that these investments will build the digital infrastructure needed to turbocharge the AI industry in the UK. The government said the deals, which came from Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI, Google among others, were a "vote of confidence in the UK." And there are, of course, compelling reasons why Britain's existing AI ecosystem is attracting these companies. It has little to do with the King. World class researchers, universities and scientific research have contributed to an ecosystem in Britain that is ripe for take off. Deep Mind was perhaps the most famous success story, a company that Google swooped in to acquire in 2014. That is something Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia was keen to remind us. Ahead of his trip to Windsor, he expressed surprise at Britain's sometimes dysphoric attitude about its own capabilities. "This week we're here to announce that the UK is going to be a superpower... but you know, Britons can be a bit humble, even deprecating, about their successes. Really, this is a moment to celebrate the UK ecosystem." He said that Britain was at the cusp of a new Industrial Revolution, and it should seize the moment. "This is the home of the origins of artificial intelligence and some of the brightest minds in AI are here. So the expertise of creating artificial intelligence and creating and training large language models is deep here." The UK has obvious expertise and appeal. It is the third largest AI market in the world, after the US and China. It is home to a third of Europe's AI start-up companies and twice as many as any other European country. Where it falters is infrastructure. High energy costs and a creaking grid are holding back growth in data centres. The government has promised to rectify this (which has caught the attention of the tech giants, hungry as they are for energy and computational power.) The deal with the US will also see both sides cooperate to expand nuclear energy in the UK. Not everyone is comfortable with all this attention from the Americans, however. US dollars will help to fund the expansion in data centres but US AI companies like OpenAI, which is partnering with Nvidia and Nscale to open a data centre in Blyth, will be at the forefront of the opportunities too. Open AI will secure the access to infrastructure, energy and computing power to run and train its models. Meanwhile Nvidia will provide the chips. Nscale, the British data centre company, is set for huge growth but- where France boasts Mistral- the UK has no comparable national AI champion. For all the claims of "sovereign AI", some may wonder whether building data centres in the UK is enough to give us sufficient control over this powerful new industry, when so much of the technology is American. Speaking to Sky News, Mr Huang batted away those concerns. "Sovereign AI starts with having your sovereign data...you have lots of your own data. The data of your people, of your companies, of your society. That data is created here. It belongs to you. You should use it to train your own large language models. There's going to be a whole bunch of different AI models being created here, and I have every confidence, so long as we provide the instrument of the science."

Microsoft, Nvidia ramping up AI investments in UK

Top U.S. tech firms, including Microsoft, Nvidia and Google, have unveiled billions of dollars' worth of new AI investments in the United Kingdom amid President Trump's state visit. Microsoft announced Tuesday that it plans to invest $30 billion in AI infrastructure and operations in Britain over the next four years, part of which will go toward building the nation's largest supercomputer. Nvidia said it and several infrastructure partners, including Nscale and CoreWeave, would be pouring up to £11 billion, or about $15 billion, into AI factories in the U.K. This will include up to 120,000 of Nvidia's most advanced chips, which will help power the newly unveiled Stargate U.K. OpenAI announced the AI infrastructure partnership with Nvidia and Nscale on Tuesday, modeled after similar efforts in the United States and United Arab Emirates. Stargate U.K. will ensure the firm's "world-leading AI models can run on local computing power," it explained in a blog post. Meanwhile, Google said it would be investing £5 billion, or about $6.8 billion, in the country over the next two years. The flurry of tech investments came as Trump traveled to the U.K. on Tuesday for his second state visit. He and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are set to sign a tech agreement during the trip, as the two countries agree to partner on the development of AI, quantum computing and nuclear energy. "This Tech Prosperity Deal marks a generational step change in our relationship with the US, shaping the futures of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic, and delivering growth, security and opportunity up and down the country," Starmer said in a statement. Several U.S. tech leaders, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, are set to join Trump in the U.K., according to Politico.

UK and US Agree $42 Billion Tech Pact to Mark Trump's Visit

By Paul Sandle and Sam Tabahriti LONDON (Reuters) -Britain and the United States have agreed a technology pact to boost ties in AI, quantum computing and civil nuclear energy, with top U.S. firms led by Microsoft pledging 31 billion pounds ($42 billion) in UK investments. The "Tech Prosperity Deal" is part of U.S. President Donald Trump's second state visit to Britain, which will include a day of pomp at Windsor Castle on Wednesday, hosted by King Charles and the royal family. Britain said the pact included joint efforts to develop AI models for healthcare, expand quantum computing capabilities and streamline civil nuclear projects. It added that it would support economic growth, scientific research and energy security in both countries. STARMER UNDER PRESSURE TO BOOST ECONOMIC GROWTH British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the deal had the potential to shape the future of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic, and deliver growth and security. The U.S. is Britain's single largest country trading partner, and its big tech companies have already invested billions of dollars in their UK operations. Starmer, under pressure to reverse years of weak economic growth, now wants to pitch Britain as a destination for further investment by opting for the light touch regulation favoured by the United States in areas such as AI, as opposed to the more interventionist approach of the European Union. The Trump administration has criticised European online safety laws and digital taxes, including those in Britain, but they were not part of the discussions over the pact. US TECH FIRMS INVEST IN THE UK Under the deals announced, chipmaker Nvidia said it would deploy 120,000 graphics processing units across Britain - its largest rollout in Europe to date. It is working to deploy up to 60,000 Grace Blackwell Ultra chips with UK-based Nscale, which will partner OpenAI in a UK leg of the U.S. company's giant Stargate project and tie-up with Microsoft to establish Britain's largest AI supercomputer. Microsoft said it would invest 22 billion pounds in total to expand cloud and AI infrastructure as well as in the supercomputer, which will be in Loughton, north-east London. Satya Nadella, chair and CEO of Microsoft, said it wanted to ensure that America remained a trusted and reliable tech partner for Britain. Its president, Brad Smith, said relations had improved hugely since the "dark days" before the UK's antitrust regulator dropped its opposition to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, saying he felt "enormously better". David Hogan, vice president for enterprise at Nvidia, told reporters the investments would "truly make the UK an AI maker, not an AI taker". Google announced a 5 billion-pound investment, including a new data centre in Waltham Cross, north of London, and continued support for AI research through its DeepMind project. Cloud computing firm CoreWeave said its 1.5 billion pound backing would fund energy-efficient data centres in partnership with Scottish firm DataVita, bringing its total UK investment to 2.5 billion pounds. Other firms announcing commitments include Salesforce, Scale AI, BlackRock, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and AI Pathfinder, with investments ranging from hundreds of millions to several billion pounds. ($1 = 0.7336 pounds) (Reporting by Sam Tabahriti and Paul Sandle. Additional reporting by Steve Holland in London and Jeffrey Dastin San Francisco. Editing by Mark Potter)

Can the US and UK forge a new tech 'Special Relationship' around AI ambitions? There's a lot riding on this week

On March 5, 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a post-World War II trip to Westminster College in Missouri where he delivered a speech notable for the being the first time the term 'Iron Curtain' was used. It was the same address that also coined another term - the idea of the 'Special Relationship' between the then British Empire and the US. The importance of the Special Relationship lingers on today, albeit now referring to the UK qua country rather than center of a global empire. No British Prime Minister can resist making a dash to the lawns of the Whitehouse upon taking office to pose for international credibility with whoever the current Presidential incumbent or to be the first foreign leader to make a visit to a new US head of state every four years or so. Whether this matters quite as much to the US end of the alliance is a matter of some speculation, but for the Brits - especially given Brexit - appearances matter here. Outside of politics, the tech sector has long had its own Special Relationship with the UK, with Britain being the natural first staging post for US firms expanding overseas, with the two countries united by a (basically) common language that made setting up shop there easier than France or Germany. That predilection may have come under some pressure in recent years as European Union (EU) countries such as Ireland and the Netherlands made themselves as attractive as possible for incomers looking for their first overseas HQ. In a post-Brexit world, the UK has a chance to carve itself a new status in the eyes of the US - outside of those EU regulations and keen to attract as much inward investment from hugely wealthy American technocracies as it can win over. Today of course the battle is to win US AI firms into setting up shop or expanding in the UK and we'll be seeing a lot of that this week - as well as a lot of Special Relationship-ing - as President Donald Trump arrives in the country for a historic second State Visit. Alongside the pomp and ceremony of banquets and visits to King Charles, the US President will be having prolonged meetings with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a man with whom he seems to have forged an unlikely working relationship, given they come from opposing ends of the political spectrum. He'll also apparently be accompanied by a number of US tech leaders who come bearing announcements of that sought-after investment, this time with - of course - an AI focus. Thursday is the main day for the tech announcement side of the Trump visit and while there have been many leaks and rumors, we'll have to wait for later in the week to find out what final form the latest tech Special Relationship iteration takes. There have been some bumps in the road, not least the heavy criticism aimed from the Whitehouse at the UK's Online Safety Act, which has been slammed as anti-American and damaging to freedom of speech, the latter point at least having some unfortunate degree of credibility. But this is a UK administration that is unashamedly AI hungry. It's practically impossible for any policy announcement to be made in 2025 without there being a strong AI vein running through it, while the Prime Minister has made no secret of his belief that the technology is the silver bullet he needs to overhaul how the entire nature of government operates. It's a big, bold bet that could yet amount to two-thirds of faff all as the political will crashes headlong into the administrative won't, but you can't fault the scale of the ambition. Last week the UK Government made hay out announcing that investment in British AI companies surged to a record £2.9 billion last year, with average deals worth £5.9 million. UK AI companies alone now contribute £11.8 billion to the UK economy - double the amount in 2023 - while AI employment tops 86,000 across the country. Those stats, it is said, mean that the UK is now second only to the US in terms of attracting AI investment, ahead of China and the rest of Europe. That's an assertion that comes with a heap of caveats, but this is not a week in which those are likely to get much of an airing. What we will be hearing a lot about, in theory, is a new tech pact with the US. As this week's UK Technology Secretary Liz Kendall - the UK Government is going through one of its more unstable periods with scandal after scandal leading to ministerial musical chairs! - claiming: Boosting our tech ties with the US will help us deliver the change people here at home expect and deserve. So who's opening their wallets this time around? Google was first out the gate on Tuesday with a pledge of £5 billion over the next two years, with a claim of generating over 8,000 employment opportunities per annum. The announcement came as the firm opened a a new data center in Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire and only a few days after the UK's Ministry of Defence announced a deal with Alphabet which it said means "that the latest technology developed by Google Cloud, including AI, data analytics, and cyber-security, will be used by defence intelligence and national security specialists to share secure information between our partners and outcompete our adversaries". It also means the US vendor picks up a £400 million contract. Meanwhile Salesforce announced plans to invest a further $2 billion in its UK business through 2030, building on the $4 billion announced in 2023 and the selection of London for its first AI Center. CEO Marc Benioff, who spent a chunk of the summer in the UK this year, is quoted in the announcement as saying: We are doubling down on our long-standing commitment to the UK with this significant investment. We're delighted that the UK, already a vital talent and innovation center, will become our AI hub for Europe, driving product innovation for customers across the region." Later in the week there is likely to be much more talk about US tech investment in the UK with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said to be part of the US Presidential delegation as part of the State Visit. That wouldn't exactly come as much of a surprise given the UK Government's recent courting of both men and their companies. NVIDIA is set to announce an investment in the UK's biggest data center, planned for Blyth in northeast England. Meanwhile in May, Altman announced OpenAI for Countries, a plan to expand the firm's US Stargate data center project with overseas versions. It's important to make some distinctions here. There's a case that can be made that the investments by the likes NVIDIA and OpenAI in national infrastructure can on the one hand be welcomed, but on the other hand is it good for the UK to become dependent on US third parties to provide the essential underpinnings to support its national ambitions. Once upon a time the UK Government of the day handed over the national network infrastructure to BT's custody and in the process, critics would argue, set back the cause of the UK internet economy by years, if not decades. And bear in mind that those US firms desperately need their own expanded infrastructure assets to try to satiate currently insatiable customer demand needs, so from their point of view being feted by governments is no bad thing. The general UK-US trade deal signed in May was politically useful on both sides of the Pond, but lacking in key detail on certain issues, not least around digital trade. The question now is what so expect from the new tech 'Special Relationship' on Thursday? On the eve of Airforce One touching down, Jason Oxman, President of the global Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) joined forces with Julian David, CEO of the British TechUK.org trade association, to urge that whatever gets announced on Thursday needs to be "ambitious and comprehensive" as well as having a hefty dose of urgency built into it: We urge both governments not to lose sight of the crown jewel of this partnership: a comprehensive U.S.-UK digital trade agreement. Such an agreement would provide the stability, certainty, and clarity necessary for long-term investment, ensure open and trusted data flows, and solidify the transatlantic technology partnership for decades to come. This work requires working with industry to tackle infrastructure, supply chain, skills and governance challenges...The Tech Pact's level of commitment and ambition has been matched by significant investment announcements from companies across the tech ecosystem. Now, more than ever, is the time for combined US and UK technology leadership to deliver on this critical agenda. According to the UK's finance secretary, Chancellor Rachel Reeves, all of this is a "vote of confidence" in the UK economy. Others take a more critical view. My attention was caught by an op ed piece in the Financial Times on Tuesday written by Mike Bracken, former UK Government Chief Digital and Data Officer and the driving force behind the revolutionary Government Digital Service before the Whitehall establishment crippled its reforming zeal in favor of the bad old ways of multi-year, mega contracts with systems integrators that not that long ago the UK was going to consign to history. Now a private sector business person and technology leader, Bracken pulls no punches: The current UK public sector choice for AI adoption, which involves government agreements penned with international AI start-ups, like Canada's Cohere and OpenAI in the US, does little for domestic companies. We are takers, not makers. None of this was inevitable. The digitisation of public services should have raised up a new group of UK tech market companies. Instead, British talent has been snapped up by overseas tech giants. The sale of AI company DeepMind to Google is now regretted in Whitehall. But there is too little interest in creating and supporting the next DeepMind. UK AI founders rightly question the deals being made with national AI favourites of other nations. Backing our own sovereign AI companies by giving them capital, access to public investment, ring-fenced public markets and throwing large public policy issues at them to solve would be a start. I've made no secret in the past of my admiration of Bracken's work in the public sector. I see no reason to change my mind at this point.

Trump to sign US-UK tech partnership in drive for AI

Some of the biggest US technology companies have pledged billions of pounds of investment to turbocharge Britain's artificial intelligence (AI) industry, as the two countries announce a landmark technology deal. Nvidia, Microsoft, Open AI and Google made a flurry of announcements to coincide with President Trump's state visit to the UK. They include plans to build data centres and invest in AI research and engineering. Money latest: Tax warning over state pension Sir Keir Starmer described the agreement, which both leaders will sign over the coming days, as "a generational step change" in Britain's relationship with the US. The deal will see both countries cooperate on AI, quantum computing and nuclear energy, with investment in modular reactors revealed earlier this week. The prime minister said it was "shaping the futures of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic, and delivering growth, security and opportunity up and down the country". The government said the deal would deliver thousands of jobs, with a new AI Growth Zone in the North East of England earmarked for 5,000 jobs. The region will host a new data centre developed in partnership with ChatGPT developer OpenAI, the US chip giant Nvidia and the British data centre company Nscale. The UK government will supply energy for the project, which will be based in Blyth. Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, who has previously drawn attention to Britain's inadequate levels of digital infrastructure, said: "Today marks a historic chapter in US-United Kingdom technology collaboration. "We are at the Big Bang of the AI era - and the United Kingdom stands in a Goldilocks position, where world-class talent, research and industry converge." The Blyth data centre is part of Stargate, Open AI's infrastructure project to build large data centres across the US. The company has also developed sites in Norway and the UAE. Nvidia, which provides the graphic processing chips (GPUs), expects to generate $20bn (£14.6bn) by the end of this year from "sovereign" deals with national governments over the coming years. Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, said: "The UK has been a longstanding pioneer of AI, and is now home to world-class researchers, millions of ChatGPT users and a government that quickly recognised the potential of this technology. "Stargate UK builds on this foundation to help accelerate scientific breakthroughs, improve productivity, and drive economic growth." Microsoft also pledged £22bn, its largest ever investment in the UK, to expand data centres and construct the country's largest AI supercomputer. Meanwhile, Google owner Alphabet pledged £5bn to expand its data centres in Hertfordshire and fund its London-based subsidiary DeepMind, which uses AI to power cutting edge scientific research. The company was founded in Britain and acquired by Google in 2014. Other investments include, £1.5bn from AI cloud computing company CoreWeave and £1.4bn from Salesforce.

UK and US agree $42 billion tech pact to mark Trump's visit - The Korea Times

LONDON -- Britain and the United States have agreed a technology pact to boost ties in AI, quantum computing and civil nuclear energy, with top U.S. firms led by Microsoft pledging 31 billion pounds ($42 billion) in U.K. investments. The "Tech Prosperity Deal" is part of U.S. President Donald Trump's second state visit to Britain, which will include a day of pomp at Windsor Castle on Wednesday, hosted by King Charles and the royal family. Britain said the pact included joint efforts to develop AI models for healthcare, expand quantum computing capabilities and streamline civil nuclear projects. It added that it would support economic growth, scientific research and energy security in both countries. Starmer under pressure to boost economic growth British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the deal had the potential to shape the future of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic, and deliver growth and security. The U.S. is Britain's single largest country trading partner, and its big tech companies have already invested billions of dollars in their U.K. operations. Starmer, under pressure to reverse years of weak economic growth, now wants to pitch Britain as a destination for further investment by opting for the light touch regulation favoured by the United States in areas such as AI, as opposed to the more interventionist approach of the European Union. The Trump administration has criticised European online safety laws and digital taxes, including those in Britain, but they were not part of the discussions over the pact. U.S. tech firms invest in the U.K. Under the deals announced, chipmaker Nvidia said it would deploy 120,000 graphics processing units across Britain -- its largest rollout in Europe to date. It is working to deploy up to 60,000 Grace Blackwell Ultra chips with U.K.-based Nscale, which will partner OpenAI in a UK leg of the U.S. company's giant Stargate project and tie-up with Microsoft to establish Britain's largest AI supercomputer. Microsoft said it would invest 22 billion pounds in total to expand cloud and AI infrastructure as well as in the supercomputer, which will be in Loughton, north-east London. Satya Nadella, chair and CEO of Microsoft, said it wanted to ensure that America remained a trusted and reliable tech partner for Britain. Its president, Brad Smith, said relations had improved hugely since the "dark days" before the U.K.'s antitrust regulator dropped its opposition to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, saying he felt "enormously better". David Hogan, vice president for enterprise at Nvidia, told reporters the investments would "truly make the U.K. an AI maker, not an AI taker." Google announced a 5 billion-pound investment, including a new data centre in Waltham Cross, north of London, and continued support for AI research through its DeepMind project. Cloud computing firm CoreWeave said its 1.5 billion pound backing would fund energy-efficient data centres in partnership with Scottish firm DataVita, bringing its total U.K. investment to 2.5 billion pounds. Other firms announcing commitments include Salesforce, Scale AI, BlackRock, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and AI Pathfinder, with investments ranging from hundreds of millions to several billion pounds. ($1 = 0.7336 pounds)

UK and US seal $42B tech pact during Trump's visit By Invezz

Invezz.com - Britain and the United States have sealed a technology pact that combines investment with strategic cooperation in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and civil nuclear energy. The agreement positions Britain as a hub for AI and data infrastructure, with US firms pledging £31 billion ($42 billion) in commitments across cloud, semiconductors, and nuclear research, as per a Reuters report. For Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the pact is also a response to pressure to revive economic growth, signalling a push for investment-friendly regulation while avoiding the more interventionist approach of the European Union. Microsoft leads with £22 billion AI supercomputer projectMicrosoft confirmed it will invest £22 billion in cloud and AI infrastructure, including Britain's largest AI supercomputer, to be built in Loughton, north-east London. The move strengthens Britain's role in AI development and expands Microsoft's existing ties, following the resolution of regulatory tensions over its Activision Blizzard acquisition. Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chair and CEO, outlined plans to use the investment to secure reliable transatlantic technology cooperation. The announcement comes as Starmer seeks to position Britain as an attractive market for global technology firms, highlighting the UK's regulatory flexibility compared to the European Union. Nvidia deploys 120,000 GPUs in largest European rolloutNvidia said it would deploy 120,000 graphics processing units across Britain, its biggest rollout in Europe to date. The investment includes plans to bring up to 60,000 Grace Blackwell Ultra chips through a tie-up with Nscale, supporting OpenAI's operations in the UK. Nvidia vice president David Hogan said the expansion would mark a shift from Britain being "an AI taker" to becoming an AI developer. The deployment of GPUs underpins Britain's growing role in hosting large-scale AI models and computing capacity, which are central to health research and quantum computing innovation. Google, CoreWeave, and other firms expand UK presenceGoogle announced a £5 billion investment, with a new data centre in Waltham Cross, north of London, and continued funding for DeepMind's AI research. The expansion underscores its long-term UK presence and role in AI development. Cloud computing company CoreWeave confirmed a £1.5 billion investment in partnership with Scottish data firm DataVita, bringing its total UK investment to £2.5 billion. Its focus will be on energy-efficient data centres, adding infrastructure capacity that complements Microsoft and Nvidia's deployments. Other US companies have also pledged funds. Salesforce, Scale AI, BlackRock, Oracle, Amazon Web Services, and AI Pathfinder will together add billions of pounds in commitments, ranging from cloud services to investment in AI systems. Pact adds nuclear and quantum cooperation to growth agendaThe pact also covers joint projects in civil nuclear energy and quantum computing. Britain said the agreement would streamline nuclear development, boosting energy security while linking transatlantic research. It also includes collaborations in quantum systems, aiming to expand computing capabilities in both countries. The US remains Britain's largest single-country trading partner. While Donald Trump's administration had previously criticised European digital tax and online safety rules, such issues were not part of the negotiations. Instead, the focus remained on AI, energy, and scientific research. For Starmer, who has faced sustained pressure to accelerate Britain's economic recovery after years of weak growth, the pact offers a path to attract high-value investment. The scale of commitment -- £31 billion -- gives the UK one of the largest inflows of US-led technology investment in its history.

U.S. Tech Giants Pledge Over $40 Billion in U.K. Investments Ahead of Trump Visit -- Update

Major American tech companies said they would spend more than $40 billion to expand artificial-intelligence infrastructure in the U.K., a boost for the island nation as it prepares to welcome President Trump for a state visit. Microsoft said Tuesday that it would pour $30 billion into AI infrastructure and existing operations in the U.K. through 2028, its largest financial commitment in the country. Microsoft's pledge comes hours after Alphabet-unit Google said it would spend about $6.8 billion in AI, research and development and related engineering in the U.K. over the next two years. Meanwhile, Nvidia, OpenAI and British company Nscale are joining forces to set up AI infrastructure to satisfy OpenAI's power needs in the U.K. Dubbed Stargate U.K., the project is expected to be based in the North East, leveraging tens of thousands of Nvidia's Grace Blackwell Ultra graphics processing units. "We are at the Big Bang of the AI era--and the United Kingdom stands in a Goldilocks position, where world-class talent, research and industry converge," Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said. Among other investments, AI cloud-computing company CoreWeave plans to spend 1.5 billion pounds ($2.04 billion) in AI data-center capacity and operations in the U.K. Salesforce announced an additional $2 billion investment in its U.K. business through 2030, while BlackRock is pouring 500 million pounds into data centers across the country. The string of announcements came as King Charles III prepares to welcome Trump on Wednesday for a state visit. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is also due in London, where he is expected to engage with British government officials and the private sector. Britain has, for now, secured an early tariff deal that is lower than the levies outlined for most other countries. The U.K. government said Tuesday that Washington and London had struck a partnership aimed at developing fast-growing technologies such as AI, quantum and nuclear. Dubbed the Tech Prosperity Deal, the pact is expected to improve transatlantic AI research in fields like precision medicine, chronic diseases and even space exploration. London said the two countries would set up a taskforce to research quantum technology, which is significantly faster than tech powering traditional computers, and potentially deploy it in areas like healthcare and defense. The partnership will also make it faster for companies to build nuclear power stations, reducing the timeframes to obtain licenses. U.K. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the deal was a vote of confidence in Britain's AI sector as Europe plays catchup with the U.S. on the technology. OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in 2022 ushered in a spending bonanza, but Europe has been left largely behind. Earlier this year, Washington announced the Stargate AI venture to build data centers in the U.S. for OpenAI. The ChatGPT maker, SoftBank Group, Oracle and UAE firm MGX are the equity funders in Stargate, for which they had committed $100 billion initially, far more than investments seen in Europe. News Corp, owner of Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.

Microsoft Will Invest $30 Billion in AI Infrastructure, Operations Across U.K.

By Mauro Orru and Connor Hart Microsoft will spend $30 billion on artificial-intelligence infrastructure and existing operations in the U.K. through 2028, the largest financial commitment the tech giant has made in the island nation. The investment comes shortly after Alphabet's Google pledged to invest nearly $7 billion in the U.K. over the next two years, and as the country prepares to welcome President Trump for a state visit. Microsoft said Tuesday that its investment includes a $15 billion capital expenditure to build out the U.K.'s cloud and AI infrastructure, enabling the company to build the country's largest supercomputer in partnership with Nscale. The company added its investments will help meet growing customer demand, while simultaneously strengthening economic ties between the U.K. and U.S. "Microsoft's landmark investment is a powerful vote of confidence in U.K.'s leadership in AI and cutting-edge technology," Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, adding it will support thousands of jobs and allow the country to remain at the forefront of global innovation. The disclosure came as King Charles III prepares to welcome President Trump on Wednesday for a state visit. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is also due in London, where he is expected to engage with British government officials and the private sector. Britain has for now secured an early tariff deal that is lower than the levies outlined for most other countries. The U.K. government said Tuesday that Washington and London had struck a partnership aimed at developing fast-growing technologies like AI, quantum and nuclear. Dubbed the Tech Prosperity Deal, the pact is expected to improve transatlantic AI research in fields like precision medicine, chronic diseases and even space exploration. Write to Mauro Orru at [email protected] and Connor Hart at [email protected]