UK executives urge £20 billion push for sovereign AI

UK technology leaders are pressing the government to scale up support for sovereign AI, warning that national resilience and influence increasingly depend on reliable access to compute, secure deployment routes, strategic models and effective procurement. The open letter to Andy Burnham and AI minister Kaniska Narayan was signed by executives from defense, financial services and critical national infrastructure firms, including Cosine, PA Consulting, BT, Telefónica Tech, Leonardo, HPE, Kainos and Sopra Steria.

The group is seeking financial support of at least £20 billion over the next five years through public investment, procurement guarantees and co-investment. The funding would be directed toward sovereign British AI compute, power, data-center capacity and network infrastructure for government, defense, academia and strategic industry, alongside changes to planning laws, energy policy, procurement and long-term contracts.

The proposals also call for UK-led model development, access for government, defense and the NHS to proprietary British datasets under strict safeguards, and independent testing and monitoring of high-consequence systems. The firms want a cross-party ten-year Sovereign AI Strategy with clear objectives, annual accountability and long-term funding certainty. The government has already launched a £500 million Sovereign AI fund to back domestic AI companies with targeted investment, supercomputer access, R&D support and grants.