Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said the UK needs more computing capacity to capitalise on its AI potential, as prime minister Kier Starmer pledged a fresh £1bn in investment to expand the country’s sovereign AI computing infrastructure.
At the opening of London Tech Week on Monday Huang said the UK had “incredible” AI research talent and the world’s biggest AI venture capital market after the US and China.
He said the country was missing only one thing. “It is surprising: this is the largest AI ecosystem in the world without its own infrastructure,” he said.
Government backing
Starmer, speaking alongside Huang at the event, said an extra £1bn in funding would scale up the country’s AI computing power “by a factor of 20”, adding that the technology would improve public services.
“We can be an AI maker, not an AI taker,” he said.
Nvidia is currently looking to form such “sovereign AI” deals, recently announcing similar but much larger plans with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to build AI infrastructure with state-backed funds.
The leading maker of AI accelerator chips is currently mostly dependent on a handful of major US tech firms for more than half of its data centre revenues.
Several other AI infrastructure announcements marked the beginning of London Tech Week, including plans by AI cloud providers Nscale and Nebius to build new facilities in the UK powered by thousands of Nvidia GPUs that are intended to come online later this year.
Nvidia said it would launch an AI Technology Centre in Bristol to train developers in the technology and would establish the UK Sovereign AI Industry Forum with companies including BAE Systems, BT and Standard Chartered to help accelerate AI adoption.
Testing environment
The company is also working with the Financial Conduct Authority and fintech start-up NayaOne to create a secure environment for testing AI for financial services.
The programme is to go online from October as part of broader government plans to promote AI and cut red tape around the technology.
It is open to all financial services firms to help with the early stages of AI adoption, offering access to technical expertise, data sets and regulatory support, the FCA said.
At the beginning of this year Starmer said he wanted to make the UK an AI “superpower”.
