A decisive shift to power British AI: new £1.1 billion plan to back chip firms, boost computing power and skills for the AI revolution - GOV.UK

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Press release

A decisive shift to power British AI: new £1.1 billion plan to back chip firms, boost computing power and skills for the AI revolution

New AI Hardware Plan sets out how the government will back British companies developing the chips and semiconductor technologies behind AI

From:

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and The Rt Hon Liz Kendall MP

Published<br>8 June 2026

Ambitious £1.1 billion AI Hardware Plan to back British firms developing the chips and computing power behind AI

£750 million for new national AI supercomputer - including £400 million to purchase next generation AI chips, of which £150 million is an advance commitment to buy novel chips from innovative startups and British firms already at the cutting edge of chip design

A new UK fund led by Silicon Valley investors Playground Global and backed by up to £150m from the British Business Bank - the largest fund investment the bank has ever made - to invest in UK-based hardware companies and help them scale

A landmark £1.1 billion plan to boost Britain’s ability to develop, deploy and scale AI technologies and chips has been unveiled today (Monday 8 June) – pouring investment to back the next generation of British chip companies to support growth and jobs, strengthen national security, and boost the UK’s competitiveness.

AI is already changing how economies work, public services operate and countries protect their interests. As more of the economy and public services comes to rely on AI, it matters more than ever that Britain has the ability to develop key technologies securely here at home. Ready access to compute is critical to these ambitions: giving AI innovators the digital horsepower they need, to get to work in Britain.

The new AI Hardware Plan, announced by the Technology Secretary Liz Kendall at London Tech Week, sets out how the government will back British companies developing the chips and semiconductor technologies behind AI, while also investing in the scientists, engineers and technicians needed to turn new ideas into products and good jobs in the UK.

It comes just over a month after she announced in her speech at RUSI that the government would bring forward plans to boost Britain’s sovereign AI capabilities.

The global AI chips market is expected to reach one trillion dollars in the early 2030s. If Britain could secure just 5% of this market it would bring fifty billion dollars in revenue to the UK with tens of thousands of highly paid jobs in tech.

British companies - from Arm, whose chip designs are used in everything from smartphones to AI data centres, to startups like Fractile and Olix, which have raised more than £320 ($440) million between them - are already leading the next generation of AI hardware.  This plan backs them - and the startups coming up behind them - to become the British AI titans of the future.

As the market shifts from general-purpose chips to bespoke hardware, that plays directly to the UK’s strengths, creating an opportunity for British firms to lead in the AI infrastructure of the future.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said:

AI is the defining currency of economic and hard power in today’s world and the countries that control the hardware behind it will hold the keys to the future.

The UK is already a global leader in chip design, and I believe this is a race Britain can win. To do that, we must back more British AI – and that means investing in the chips, computing power and skilled people behind it.

That is exactly what this plan does, backing the British firms developing the next generation of AI hardware, so we get more jobs, more growth, and more control over the technologies our future depends on. We are backing Britain because we believe in Britain.

The AI Hardware Plan includes:

New £750 million for a national AI supercomputer: One of the most advanced in the world when deployed in 2030, it will bring together proven and next-generation processors and cutting-edge chips to run complex tasks more efficiently than traditional supercomputers. This is known as a heterogeneous mixed chip system. We want to see British-designed chips form a crucial part of the system, which will join Isambard-AI and Zenith (alongside DAWN) as part of the...