Britain’s AI infrastructure needs an “urgent” overhaul to avoid becoming dependent on foreign countries for resources, according to a new report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI).
The UK has committed £1bn to bolstering its compute power and launched its AI action plan — but has come under fire from local tech leaders for failing to invest in the infrastructure needed to scale domestically.
In a report published Tuesday, the TBI says critical reforms are needed to planning, infrastructure and energy systems to enable widespread AI adoption and safeguard national and economic security.
Global powers, including the US, China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are spending billions of dollars as they scramble to boost their AI infrastructure and capitalise on what TBI calls the “21st century’s most important economic race”.
In June, prime minister Keir Starmer said that he wanted the UK to become a “maker” not a “taker” of AI compute. The same day, Jensen Huang criticised the UK for being the world’s largest AI ecosystem without its own infrastructure.
“Britain must build — the country’s AI infrastructure situation is dire, and the consequences matter,” writes the report’s author, TBI senior policy advisor Keegan McBride.
Jamie Hutton, CTO of British AI analytics unicorn Quantexa, says the UK has to commit resources to building out AI infrastructure. He tells Sifted: “If the UK is to lead on the global AI stage, not just as a consumer of innovation, but as a creator and exporter of transformative technology, it must invest now in the digital backbone of that future.”
He adds: “Building the infrastructure for AI isn’t optional, it’s the key to unlocking long-term prosperity, national resilience and global competitiveness.”
Urgent overhaul
In January, the UK published its grand AI plan, which pledged to create several “AI growth zones”, speed up planning approvals and allow better access to the energy grid for data centres.
But the TBI says the UK “risks” falling behind other global powers in the AI race — holding just 3% of the world’s computing power, compared to the US which owns 75%.
According to the report, the UK cannot compete in the resource-intensive race to train frontier AI models, which is dominated by the US, China and Gulf states, who are investing hundreds of billions of dollars into building vast compute clusters. Britain lacks the funds, land and energy resources needed to keep pace, it says.
Instead, the country should focus on deploying and widely adopting AI, applying it to sectors including health, education, government, defence and science in a bid to boost productivity.
To get there, the UK will need to bolster its AI infrastructure — but the government plans are “not enough”, the TBI says.
“At the current construction pace, the country is unlikely to meet its 2030 target of 6GW of AI-ready capacity on UK soil,” the report says. “Planning and permitting delays, grid constraints and soaring industrial-energy costs are preventing progress.”
The report urges government ministers to take a number of steps to ensure the UK doesn’t fall behind other global AI leaders.
It calls for the reform of the planning system to push through data centres builds, alongside developing a series of new nuclear projects to power them.
The TBI also wants to establish an “AI infrastructure Delivery Group” — modelled on the Vaccine Taskforce rolled out during Covid — within Whitehall, consisting of cross-party officials alongside external bodies like energy regulator Ofgem and the National Grid.
