Microsoft has invested £2.5bn towards the UK’s AI industry. Credit: William Barton/shutterstock

The UK’s AI sector is to receive a £2.5bn investment from Microsoft, the main investor behind ChatGPT developers OpenAI. 

The investment was announced at a gathering of multinational executives on Monday (27 Nov) aimed at increasing foreign investment into the UK.

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The money will go towards AI infrastructure and upskilling workers in the UK. The investment is part of a commitment by Microsoft to train over one million people into the AI economy. 

This upskilling will include workers who have no previous background experience in AI. 

The £2.5bn will be spent over the next three years to expand Microsoft’s UK AI datacentre infrastructure and bring over 20,000 advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) to the UK by 2026. GPUs are vital in the machine learning process which allows AI to internalise data. 

The UK government welcomed the investment, stating that AI accounted for a £3.7bn contribution to the country’s economy and employed around 50,000 people. 

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“This is a huge vote of confidence in the strength of the UK’s technology sector,” said UK Secretary of Science and Technology Michelle Donelan.

“This investment not only bolsters critical infrastructure but also ensures that the UK remains at the forefront of driving economic growth and innovation,” she added.

In its executive briefing on AI, research company GlobalData predicts that the global AI market to grow from $81bn in 2022 to $909bn by 2030, attaining a 35% compound annual growth rate.  

Alongside its effort to train workers, Microsoft has also committed to furthering UK AI research at universities and companies. 

To do so, Microsoft has extended its Accelerating Foundation Models Research (AFMR) programme to provide priority access to GPUs for the UK’s science and tech community. 

The AFMR programme has recruited researchers from leading UK universities such as UCL, Cambridge, Oxford and Bath.