UK government announces grand AI plan with infrastructure investment taking centre stage

INA-  SOURCES

The UK government has revealed how it plans to invest in, and use, AI — and investment in the infrastructure that powers the technology is a key focus. 

Following the ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’, put together by Entrepreneur First’s Matt Clifford, the UK will create several “AI growth zones”, which it says will speed up planning approvals and allow better access to the energy grid for data centres — huge warehouse-like facilities designed to accommodate intense computational demands of AI. 

Alongside that, the government will build a new supercomputer — as part of a plan to increase public compute power twenty-fold by 2030 — and set up new teams within government to implement AI tools.

It’s also announcing a £14bn investment commitment into the country from UK data centre startup Nscale — which raised $185m across 2024 — and US company Vantage Data Centres.

The news comes on the back of a rocky few months for relations between the UK government and the country’s tech sector, as key funding was axed and taxes increased.

“Our plan will make Britain the world leader,” said prime minister Keir Starmer in a statement. “It will give the [AI] industry the foundation it needs…that means more jobs and investment in the UK, more money in people’s pockets, and transformed public services.”

Boosting AI infrastructure

First announced in July last year, the plan was submitted to the UK government by Clifford in September, laying out 50 measures to boost the country’s AI potential — all of which the government now says it will take forward. 

“This is a plan which puts us all-in — backing the potential of AI to grow our economy, improve lives for citizens, and make us a global hub for AI investment and innovation,” said Clifford, who is the founding chair of ARIA, the UK’s R&D funding agency, and led preparations for the UK’s inaugural AI Safety Summit in 2023, in a statement.  

“AI offers opportunities we can’t let slip through our fingers, and these steps put us on the strongest possible footing to ensure AI delivers in all corners of the country, from building skills and talent to revolutionising our infrastructure and compute power.”   

The first AI growth zone will be in Culham, Oxfordshire, where the UK’s Atomic Energy Authority — the government body responsible for developing nuclear tech — is based.

More AI growth zones will be announced in the summer, with a particular focus on de-industrialised areas of the country with access to power and strong support from local governments. 

A $2.5bn investment from Nscale, which is building AI-ready data centres, to support UK data centre infrastructure over the next three years, was also wrapped up in the announcements. 

The startup raised a $155m Series A in December, a year-and-a-half on from being founded. Nscale has also signed a contract to build the largest UK sovereign AI data centre in Loughton, Essex by 2026.

The government did not put a time frame on Vantage Data Centres’ plans to invest £12bn in data centres across the UK.

It also didn’t say how much would be invested in the new supercomputer. In August, some investors told Sifted that the government cutting funding for an £800m supercomputer based in Edinburgh University could see the UK fall behind its European counterparts.

Other measures in the plan include setting up a new National Data Library to “unlock” public data to support AI development and making AI adoption a priority for government departments.