Starmer Announces Sovereign Compute Strategy Amid £1.1bn Chip Investment

UK prime minister Keir Starmer has revealed a sovereign compute strategy to support homegrown artificial intelligence (AI) startups as the government pumps £1.1bn into the chip industry.

He said, “I am really pleased to announce a new strategy to develop sovereign compute capability. It includes a major new commitment to purchase specialist AI chips worth around £400m, providing a generational opportunity to some of our most promising startups.”

The £400m is part of a £1.1bn AI hardware plan announced by the government, which aims to improve the country’s deployment and scaling of AI technologies. As part of the plan, £750m will be used on the UK’s AI supercomputer. Of that funding, £400m will be used to purchase chips, £150m for next-generation inference chips and £250m on more specialised chips as technologies mature. These chips will power the UK’s AI supercomputer.

The government is also creating a £120m AI hardware innovation programme, which aims to give UK companies funding to design, develop and test “innovative novel chips”. There will also be funding for the Scaling Inference Lab and to upskill people in the AI hardware sector.

In his speech, Starmer said it is the government’s job to recognise the scale of UK talent and match it with the scale of the country’s ambition.

“First, we must make sure Britain remains the home of those ideas and give our innovators the tools they need to stay at the cutting edge. That is why this government has committed record levels of funding for research and development already. But it is not just enough for ideas to be born here. They have to be able to grow here, too,” he said.

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