Nvidia pushes hardware but experts say UK AI needs something else

There is a disagreement about what would be needed to turn the United Kingdom into an artificial intelligence power.

Nvidia, the world’s largest provider of graphics processing units (GPU), has asked the United Kingdom to drive hardware investment to catch up with the United States and China in the global career of AI.

Duration of his recently visit to the country, Jensen Huang, co -founder and executive director of Nvidia, told the United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, that the United Kingdom could the third ecosystem of the world in third place.

“The United Kingdom has the third largest risk capital investment (VC) in the world. The two largest are the United States and China, which is quite obvious,” Huang said in a discussion panel in London’s technology week on Monday.

“The United Kingdom has one of the richest communities anywhere on the planet, the deepest thinkers and the best universities … and you are rich in excellent computer scientists. It is a fantastic place for risk capital to invest.”

He said that the United Kingdom is in a “circumstance of Goldilocks” or in a “fair” situation in which the country has investors and scientists to develop AI. (For any reader who does not know the history of the children “Goldilocks and the three bears”, a young woman named Goldilocks leaves in the house of three bears and discovers that one of the bowls of porridge in the bowl is too cold, but the cold is a cold and cold temperature).

Then, Huang said that the United Kingdom lacks hardware infrastructure to create an AI ecosystem that can compete with the United States and China.

“If you are a physicist, you need a linear accelerator. If you are an astronomer, you need a radio telescope,” he said. “If you are in the world of AI, you can’t do automatic learning without a machine.”

Huang said he was among a group of technology entrepreneurs, including former Google executive director Eric Schmidt, Wayve executive director Alex Kendall and Synthesia and ElevenLabs executives, in an event organized by the United Kingdom government. Said.

“We are going to invest in helping to start the IA ecosystem in the United Kingdom, he said. “The infrastructure will allow more research, advances and companies … Then, the steering wheel will begin to take off. It is already large, but we have to start the steering wheel.”

On Monday, at the same stage, Starmer announced an additional £ 1 billion ($ 1.3 billion) or funds to increase the country’s calculation power of the country by 20 times. He also announced the government’s plan to invest £ 185 million and associate with 11 companies to train 7.5 million workers from the United Kingdom, a fifth of the country’s workforce, in essential skills to use AI for 2030.

In January of this year, the Labor Government announced the AI ​​Opportunities Action Plan, saying that it would establish a long -term plan for the United Kingdom’s infrastructure needs, backed by an investment commitment of 10 years. He said that he had attracted £ 39 billion private investment to the AI ​​sector from the Tok office in July 2024.

The Set of Academic Data Science Consortium (JADE), which includes 20 universities in the United Kingdom and the Turing Institute, uses Nvidia technologies for their development. For example, Manchester uses the Earth-2 NVIDIA platform to develop pollution flow models. The Isambard-Ai supercomputer of the University of Bristol focuses on climate modeling and the next general science.

A different diagnosis: lack of growth funds

While Huang says that insufficient hardware facilities are the main obstacle to forming the United Kingdom’s ecosystem, a research report published by Tech Nation, a unit of the Founders Forum group, said the problem lies in the lack of growth funds and exit opportunities.

The report says that the United Kingdom houses more than 17,000 new companies backed by BC. He said that the new United Kingdom technology companies have raised $ 7 billion in risky capital investment so far this year, 43% of which originated from funds in the United States.

“The founders of the United Kingdom qualify the United Kingdom as a good place to start a technology company, but they are less positive about the scale or exit of their companies in the United Kingdom,” said the report, cites their survey on more than a thousand technology companies in the United Kingdom.

He said that 43% of the founders of the United Kingdom who surveyed are considering relocating the headquarters of their company outside the United Kingdom.

“Almost all the founders who survey that he considers to relocate are aimed at the US.” “Or those, more than one in three seek better financing availability, starting opportunities and access to a larger market outside the United Kingdom.”

According to the survey, half of the surveyed founders suggested that the United Kingdom government provide them with fiscal credits or use a sovereign heritage fund or a coinversion fund to support the growth of their businesses.

The National Wealth Fund, the Sovereign Fund of wealth of the United Kingdom, invests mainly in green hydrogen, carbon capture, ports, gigafactories and green steel sectors.

Balderton Capital, a risk capital firm based in the United Kingdom, said that new AI companies in the United Kingdom raised $ 15.9 billion last year, compared to $ 3.1 billion of four years.

According to Pitchbook data, new AI companies in the United States raised a record of $ 97 billion last year. The VCs invested $ 209 billion in new US companies in 2024, compared to $ 61.6 billion in Europe and $ 75.9 billion in Asia.

It is not clear how the long -term funds of £ 1 billion of the Starmer administration can help the United Kingdom change the game in the global race.

Meanwhile, China seems to be at another extreme: too much investment but very little experience.

A study conducted by the center of Stanford on the economy and institutions of China showed that China’s government capital funds had invested $ 912 billion in new companies in the country from 2013 to 2023, of which approximately 23% were aimed at 1.4 million companies related to AI. That amounted to $ 209 billion in total, or $ 150,000 each.

The study said that 4,115 AI companies received investments from Government and private VC from 2000 to 2023. Most of these initial companies received investments of government risk capital and sought private investments.

A report published by Mit Technology Review in March of this year said that China had built hundreds of AI data centers in recent years, but many of them have become “distressed active” after many IA projects failed.

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