A new press release from the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has revealed that the UK’s AI industry has received daily average inflows of £200m from private investors since July 2024.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the heart of the new UK government’s so-called ‘Plan for Change’, with around £8.3m invested every hour in Britain’s AI capabilities.
The UK published its ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’ earlier this month, leading to £14bn-plus of investment and thousands of new roles created as private investors back Labour’s blueprint.
The plans come off the back of previous investment in Britain’s data centre network, which was confirmed at the Global Investment Summit just after the turn of the New Year. This weighed in at £25bn, taking the overall investment in UK-based AI and big data technologies to £39bn in the last 12 months.
Growing interest in the UK’s AI sector from across the Atlantic and in western Europe
Source: Unsplash
US-based AI cloud computing firm CoreWeave has been influential in enhancing the country’s compute capacity, onboarding NVIDIA technology to good effect. This has been implemented across a string of new data centres – the first of their kind in Britain. They are housed in the London Docklands and Crawley in Sussex. The theory behind these data centres is to make it easier to handle AI workloads, which are sure to surge in the coming months and years.
CoreWeave has also opted to make London its European headquarters, pumping approximately £1.75bn into its new UK home last year.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is also forging ahead with its plan for ensuring ambitious AI-led start-ups in the UK get the financial support needed to scale up and thrive. AI-led video content platform Synthesia is the latest example of this in action. Its most recent funding round saw its company valued at over $2 billion, making it one of the most valuable AI-focused companies in Britain.
Central to this mission for making the UK an AI powerhouse is empowering businesses to recruit top talent from overseas. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has already intimated that the UK government will be looking to make progressive tweaks to the country’s skilled worker visa framework. Reeves was present at the recent World Economic Forum event in Davos, where she confirmed the government would be leading a consultation with big businesses to find a more efficient and attractive framework which allows top overseas talent to come and turbocharge the UK’s high-growth-potential companies.
A UK sponsor licence is a necessary requirement for any business looking to recruit professionals from abroad. Licensed companies can then issue Certificates of Sponsorship to potential non-UK national recruits to support them with their visa applications at the Home Office.
Reeves’ move would appear to coincide with other big developments in the European AI sector, with French AI powerhouse Mistral also opting to make London its new headquarters. The world’s biggest IT infrastructure services firm, Kyndryl, is also looking to create upwards of 1,000 AI-linked jobs in Liverpool between 2025 and 2027.
For more information around this topic, make sure you check out:
- WEF leaders call for renewed global collaboration to support the new Intelligent Age.
Learn more about the UK’s bid to multiply its sovereign computing power.
