U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ambition for Britain to be an “AI maker, not an AI taker,” is becoming a reality at London Tech Week.
With NVIDIA’s support, the U.K. is building sovereign compute infrastructure, investing in cutting-edge research and skills, and fostering AI leadership across sectors.
As London Tech Week kicks off today, NVIDIA and some of Britain’s best companies are convening and hosting the first U.K. Sovereign AI Industry Forum.
The initiative unites leading U.K. businesses — including founding members Babcock, BAE Systems, BT, National Grid and Standard Chartered — to strengthen the nation’s economic security by advancing sovereign AI infrastructure and accelerating the growth of the U.K. AI startup ecosystem.
“We have big plans when it comes to developing the next wave of AI innovations here in the U.K. — not only so we can deliver the economic growth needed for our Plan for Change, but maintain our position as a global leader,” U.K. Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle said. “Central to that is making sure we have the infrastructure to power AI, so I welcome NVIDIA setting up the U.K. Sovereign AI Industry Forum — bringing together leading British businesses to develop and deploy this across the U.K. so we can drive growth and opportunity.”
The U.K. is a global AI hub, leading Europe in newly funded AI startups and total private AI investment through 2024. And the sector is growing fast, backed by over $28 billion in private investment since 2013.
And AI investment benefits the whole of the U.K.
According to an analysis released today by Public First, regions with more AI and data center infrastructure consistently show stronger economic growth. Even a modest increase in AI data center capacity could add nearly £5 billion to national economic output, while a more significant increase, for example, doubling access, could raise the annual benefit to £36.5 billion.
Responding to this opportunity, cloud provider Nscale announced at London Tech Week its commitment to deploy U.K. AI infrastructure with 10,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs by the end of 2026. This facility will help position the U.K. as a global leader in AI, supporting innovation, job creation and the development of a thriving domestic AI ecosystem.
And cloud provider Nebius is continuing the region’s momentum with the launch of its first AI factory in the U.K. It announced it’s bringing 4,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs online, making available scalable, high-performance AI capacity at home in the U.K. — to power U.K. research, academia and public services, including the NHS.
Mind the (Skills) Gap
AI developers are the engine of this new industrial revolution. That’s why NVIDIA is supporting the U.K. government’s national skills drive by training developers in AI.
To support this goal, a new NVIDIA AI Technology Center in the U.K. will provide hands-on training in AI, data science and accelerated computing, focusing on foundation model builders, embodied AI, materials science and earth systems modeling.
Beyond training, this collaboration drives cutting-edge AI applications and research.
For example, the U.K.’s world-leading financial services industry gets a boost from a new AI-powered digital sandbox. This sandbox, a digital testing environment for safe AI innovation in financial services, will be provided by the Financial Conduct Authority, with infrastructure provided by NayaOne and supported by NVIDIA’s platform.
At the same time, Barclays Eagle Labs’ launch of an Innovation Hub in London will help AI and deep tech startups grow to the next level. NVIDIA is supporting the program by offering startups a pathway to the NVIDIA Inception program with access to advanced tools and training.
Furthermore, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to promote the nation’s goals for AI development in telecoms. Leading U.K. universities will gain access to a suite of powerful AI tools, 6G research platforms and training resources to bolster research and development on AI-native wireless networks.
The Research Engine
Universities are central to the U.K.’s strategy.
Led by Oxford University, the JADE consortium, comprising 20 universities and the Turing Institute, uses NVIDIA technologies to advance AI development and safety. At University College London, researchers are developing a digital twin of the human body enabled by NVIDIA technology. At the University of Bristol, the Isambard-AI supercomputer, built on NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips, is powering progress in AI safety, climate modeling and next-generation science. And at the University of Manchester, the NVIDIA Earth-2 platform is being deployed to develop pollution-flow models.
Meanwhile, U.K. tech leaders use NVIDIA’s foundational technologies to innovate across diverse sectors.
It’s how Wayve trains AI for autonomous vehicles. How JBA Risk Management helps organizations anticipate and mitigate climate risks with new precision. And how Stability AI is unleashing creativity with open-source generative AI that turns ideas into images, text and more — instantly.
NVIDIA also champions the U.K.’s most ambitious AI startups through NVIDIA Inception, providing specialized resources and support for startups building new products and services.
Basecamp Research is revolutionizing drug discovery with AI trained on the planet’s biodiversity. Humanoid advances automation and brings commercially scalable, reliable and safe humanoid robots closer to real-world deployment. Relation is accelerating the discovery of tomorrow’s medicines. And Synthesia turns text into studio-quality, multilingual videos with lifelike avatars.
Industry in Motion
The U.K.’s biggest companies are moving fast, too.
Companies like BT, LSEG and NatWest are transforming industries with AI. BT is powering agentic AI-based autonomous operations; LSEG is empowering customers with highly accurate, AI-driven data and insights; and NatWest is streamlining operations and safeguarding customers.
With government vision, talent and cutting-edge tech converging, the U.K. is taking its place among those making AI advances at home and worldwide.
Watch NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote NVIDIA GTC Paris at VivaTech.
