The recent London Tech Week was a huge success, bringing together investors and innovators, public and private from all over the world.

In his opening speech, Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer sat down with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to discuss the potential of AI in the UK. Sir Keir announced a £1bn boost for AI infrastructure across the UK, in a bid to convert the UK from “an AI taker to an AI maker”. According to Starmer, the funding will enable the UK to grow its high-performance computing capacity by a factor of 20, representing “a huge increase in the size and power of Britain’s AI engine”.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang echoed the positive sentiment, hailing the AI infrastructure in the UK as “perfect for take-off”.

A new Department for Science, Technology and Innovation (DSIT) project Tech First was announced, a £187m scheme bringing digital skills and AI learning into classrooms and communities. It will train people of all ages and backgrounds in AI literacy.

Here is a breakdown of the funding:

·       TechGrad (£96.8m) – Will support 1,000 exceptional domestic students a year with undergraduate scholarships in areas like AI, cyber security, and computer science. This will also go towards 100 Research MSc places in key tech sectors, and 100 elite AI scholarships. Applicants will be able to apply to the scheme online and those successful will have their bursaries paid from a central fund.

·       TechExpert (£48.4m) – Will give up to £10,000 in additional funding to 500 domestic PhD students conducting research in tech with the aim of accelerating cutting-edge innovation, strengthen the UK’s research pipeline in strategic technology sectors, and ensure that emerging talent is supported to contribute to national tech leadership.

·       TechLocal (£18m) – Will offer seed funding to help regional innovators and small businesses develop new tech products and adopt AI. A panel made up of local tech businesses will be established in each region to decide which applications have merit, with the necessary checks then done centrally by Innovate UK.

The government also took the chance to demonstrate how exciting new AI tools are helping them:

• 1.5m new homes – digitised planning document (Decades-old planning documents are converted into data, in minutes)
• Asylum claims – AI tools to speed up decision making
• Hospital discharges – AI tools automatically scan and extract details from medical records

Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Innovation Peter Kyle announced the winner of the Tech Nation Rising Stars competition – Uhubs – a company “born to solve the global skill crisis”, with a focus on helping other companies unleashing their potential with the help of AI. They won £1,000,000 in investment.

Wayve.ai is partnering with Uber to deliver level four driverless vehicles in London, similar to Waymo in America.

London Tech Week was a huge success, highlighting the buzz around AI and its perfect match for investment; the UK.