04. A UK stake in UK AI

The Problem

A handful of US companies are becoming the most powerful private enterprises in history. Outside the US and China, countries are waking up to the risk of becoming totally dependent on them. The EU, South Korea, India and Brazil are all racing to build their own AI capabilities. The UK can’t afford to sit on the sidelines.

Without credible domestic alternatives, these companies will increasingly be able to set the terms: on market access, on regulation, on procurement, and on tax. We’re already seeing the early signs here in the UK. Public contracts awarded to foreign firms without competitive tender. Sensitive NHS and government data sitting in systems owned by firms in other jurisdictions. “Phantom investments” in UK AI infrastructure announced, then quietly never materialising.

The government’s new Sovereign AI Unit is a step in the right direction. But an approach that only thinks about UK competitiveness risks deepening our dependence on the wider US tech stack.

The Sovereign AI Unit is a step in the right direction, but we need a more ambitious understanding of the public good.

What we want

We need a more ambitious idea of what the public good actually looks like — one that builds public ownership and democratic oversight.

We’re campaigning for:

Binding community benefit agreements as a condition of AI Growth Zone designation: local jobs, skills investment, lower energy bills for surrounding areas, business rates spent locally
Conditions on access to public assets like NHS data and BBC archives — covering tax, employment, and data governance
Exploration of “sovereign data wealth funds”, pooling new datasets that could be licensed to AI developers, with the proceeds shared with the public
Competition and Market Authority enforcement of its Strategic Market Status powers — using existing legislation rather than waiting for new frameworks
Expanded public compute investment, with preferential access for organisations with democratic ownership: cooperatives, public interest companies, and publicly-owned models
Support for open-source AI and non-hyperscaler alternatives

If the Saudi sovereign wealth fund can invest in our data centres, so can the UK state. Working with other “middle powers” facing the same dependencies will be crucial to avoiding a race-to-the-bottom.