Map shows where AI hotspots will be in bid to make UK a ‘superpower’
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To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video. Up Next. A village in Oxfordshire will become a global tech hub rivalling Silicon Valley if government plans succeed. Culham, population 453 at last count, has been designated as an AI Growth Hub as part of a bid to ‘turbocharge’ tech in the UK.
Keir Starmer announced last night that the government will invest massively in the AI sector to drive economic growth, taking on the current giants of the US and China and hoping to attract billions of pounds of investment. The village near Abingdon is the first growth zone to be identified, and it is not merely a sleepy hamlet chosen randomly. It is also the headquarters of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and hosts a lab for fusion research. This means it has the potential to provide the vast amounts of energy needed to power AI models.
Other zones will be announced as the plan continues, and all will be able to boast faster planning decisoins and access to unusually large amounts of energy. As well as these growth zones, the government set out other areas where AI investment is already coming in.
In Liverpool, a new tech hub is planned by IT services provider Kyndryl. In Loughton, Essex, Nscale has signed a contract to build the largest UK sovereign AI data centre by 2026. And in Cardiff, Wales, Vantage Data Centres is working to build one of Europe’s largest data centre campuses.
