(June 7): The UK will offer to buy artificial intelligence (AI) chips from technology companies in an effort to encourage them to stay in Britain, the Telegraph reported on Sunday.
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall will outline plans to make “strategic purchases” of semiconductor equipment from UK-based companies in a speech at the London Tech Week conference this week, the paper said, citing draft outlines of the proposals.
The plans also involve ensuring companies have access to funding, including from the taxpayer, and investing in skills so the firms can keep their workforces in Britain.
In a speech at Bloomberg in January, Kendall said the government intended to plug £1 billion (US$1.3 billion) into expanding its AI research resource “by 20-fold.” The initiative offers free public compute to businesses and researchers.
The UK has been grappling with how to remain a draw to its burgeoning tech companies, as well as how to become less reliant on overseas firms for procurement contracts.
A recent report from lawmakers on the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee said that the US firm Palantir Technologies Inc should not play such a significant role in the UK public sector, and warned of a growing reliance on a small number of providers including Microsoft Corp and Amazon Web Services.
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Kendall said in her January speech: “We must, and we are, securing our own sovereign AI capability”.
“This is far too important a technology to depend entirely on other countries especially in areas like defence, financial services and healthcare,” she added.
A number of promising UK tech companies have been snapped up by buyers overseas, with US semiconductor giant Qualcomm buying Alphawave IP Group Plc for US$2.4 billion last year, while AI chip designer Graphcore was purchased by SoftBank Group Corp in 2024. British chip designer Arm Holdings Plc, whose majority owner is SoftBank, picked New York for its main listing in 2023.
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