Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang has pledged to help the UK build the infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence, speaking at London Tech Week alongside Prime Minister Keir Starmer this morning.

As part of this effort, Nvidia will establish the UK Sovereign AI Industry Forum — a coalition of leading British businesses including Babcock, BAE Systems, BT, National Grid, and Standard Chartered — to develop and deploy AI infrastructure that drives growth and strengthens the nation’s economic security.

Huang warned that while the UK is well-placed to lead in AI, it lacks the hardware to match its ambition. “The UK AI ecosystem is really perfect for take‑off,” he said. “It’s just missing one thing. It is surprising: this is the largest AI ecosystem in the world without its own infrastructure.” He continued: “You can’t do machine-learning without machines. The ability to build these AI supercomputers here in the UK will naturally attract more start-ups.”

Cloud provider Nscale announced it will deploy 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs in the UK by the end of 2026, promising to support innovation, job creation, and a thriving AI ecosystem.

Huang described the UK as being in a “Goldilocks circumstance” — “not too hot, not too cold” — where research talent, entrepreneurship, and policy align to make it “the envy of the world.” “The UK has the most abundant of the most critical of resources — AI researchers,” he said.

He underlined that infrastructure fuels a virtuous cycle of innovation: “Infrastructure enables more research, more research, more breakthroughs, more companies. That flywheel will start taking off; it’s already quite large.”

Nvidia’s plans also include supporting the construction of UK-based AI supercomputers, which will serve as a backbone for the country’s AI ambitions and help unlock the potential of its research base.

Nvidia will launch a UK-based AI lab and work with local partners to support startups and upskill the developer ecosystem. “We’re going to start our AI lab here,” Huang said. “We’re going to partner with the UK to upskill the ecosystem of developers into the world of AI.”

Prime Minister Starmer welcomed Nvidia’s endorsement as a vote of confidence in the UK’s technology strategy. He announced a £1 billion investment to scale the country’s compute power twentyfold and pledged to roll out digital skills programmes for young people, alongside new AI applications in healthcare, defence, and the public sector.

Separately, the government regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) also announced a new scheme for banks to experiment with NVIDIA AI products in a ‘supercharged sandbox’, launching this October.

This comes as UK banks look to accelerate AI adoption to tackle fraud, boost efficiency and stay globally competitive.

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