Microsoft, OpenAI herald Trump’s British visit with AI pledges

LONDON – Microsoft, OpenAI and other US companies announced plans to spend tens of billions of dollars on technology infrastructure in Britain, part of a series of business deals that coincide with President Donald Trump’s visit to the nation this week. 

The tech giants are dedicating more than £31 billion (S$54 billion) to artificial intelligence (AI) systems, quantum computing initiatives and other tech projects, the British Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said in a statement on Sept 16.

Joining Mr Trump on the visit are several Silicon Valley luminaries, including Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and Sam Altman from OpenAI, which is also bringing its Stargate programme to Britain.

The announcements bolster an effort by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to strengthen ties with the US and boost technology growth. He has pledged to fast-track planning approval for data centres and ease access to the power grid in Britain, which has some of the most expensive electricity in Europe.

The British government also said it is opening a new AI Growth Zone, a data centre facility that Mr Starmer’s Labour Party has argued will bring jobs to the country.

“The two countries are now pairing up,” Mr Kanishka Narayan, an undersecretary for the British Science Department, said in a press briefing. “At the heart of it, it’s a focus not just on the history of our special relationship but (also) on our future.”

With the Silicon Valley deals, Mr Starmer is avoiding a tactic used by some European nations, notably France, which has promoted home-grown AI firms and signalled its independence from US technology.  

OpenAI is at the centre of a US$500 billion (S$638 billion) Stargate AI infrastructure project that Mr Trump announced in January. The AI company has said that it will take its Stargate effort to other countries.

For the British site, OpenAI and its partners will be hosting as many as 60,000 of Nvidia’s latest Blackwell chips at a supercomputing facility in Loughton, outside of London, according to the British government. Mr Narayan declined to say how much the companies would be investing in the project.

Britain joins other countries around the world in trying to build out local AI infrastructure – what is known as sovereign AI. Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, sees this trend as key to its future growth. 

Though the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker has already seen meteoric sales increases in the past two years, it gets much of its revenue from a handful of giant data centre operators. The sovereign AI push will contribute to as much as US$4 trillion in AI spending by the end of the decade, Mr Huang has said. BLOOMBERG