‘Resilience or reliance’ – Tech chiefs urge Burnham to spend £20bn on ‘sovereign AI’
British tech bosses have called on the government to commit more than £20bn to sovereign AI infrastructure, warning the UK risks becoming dependent on foreign technology in one of the most important industries of the coming decades.
Senior figures from BT, Telefónica Tech, Leonardo, HPE, Kainos and Sopra Steria are among the signatories to an open letter coordinated by British AI lab Cosine, which calls for a five-year programme spanning computing power, data centres, energy and government procurement. The letter, addressed to Andy Burnham and AI minister Kanishka Narayan, argues AI should be treated as “strategic national infrastructure” alongside other critical assets.
“Countries with reliable access to compute, secure deployment pathways, strategic models, and effective procurement will have greater resilience and influence”, the signatories said.
“Countries that lack those capabilities risk becoming dependent on decisions, infrastructure and operating conditions determined elsewhere”.
The group wants the government to publish a Sovereign AI Capability Plan within 90 days and establish a cross-party, 10-year strategy to give companies greater certainty over investment.
Its proposals include backing British models in areas such as cyber security, defence, science and public services, while ensuring critical infrastructure does not rely on a single AI model or tech stack.
Foreign secretary Ed Miliband said on Monday that the threat posed by AI, “according to its own inventors, is daunting”, as he backed plans to put the technology at the heart of Britain’s G20 presidency next year.
Miliband warned governments “cannot leave it to corporations to put in place the guardrails to serve the public interest”, adding that companies’ purpose was to maximise profits.
Burnham has separately pledged to use the presidency to seek common international standards for safe AI development.
Government urged to go further on AI
Cosine’s proposals would represent a significant expansion of the government’s existing sovereign AI programme.
Ministers have already established a £500m Sovereign AI fund to back British AI companies and give them access to state computing resources and procurement opportunities.
Last month, the government launched the first competitions under a £100m procurement scheme aimed at giving smaller British AI companies public sector contracts.
Companies will retain the intellectual property they develop, while upfront payments can be made to smaller businesses struggling with the costs of bidding for government work.
AI minister Narayan said at the launch that the programme would put “the heft of a nation behind Britain’s AI founders”, helping companies “grow here, and go on to win globally”.
Cosine, which is developing the British frontier model Lumen, said Britain should use long-term contracts, planning and energy policy to make the country more competitive for training and deploying advanced AI.
It also called for secure national data environments that could allow strategically important models to be trained on British government, defence and NHS data, subject to privacy safeguards and auditing.
“This is not a case for technological isolation”, the letter said. Instead, Britain should continue working with allies while maintaining domestic capabilities where foreign dependence would create a national risk.