Question to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, what assessment he has made of the extent to which public investment through the Sovereign AI fund is expected to leverage additional private sector investment into the UK semiconductor sector.

The Sovereign AI Fund invests alongside the private sector in areas of existing UK strength, where government action can materially improve scaling outcomes, and there is a credible path to success. These include compute and infrastructure, which span emerging semiconductor and AI hardware technologies.

The Fund’s integrated offer – combining equity investment, compute, R&D funding, procurement and talent support – will help crowd in follow-on finance, government demand and wider ecosystem engagement for supported companies.

More broadly, concentrating public funding into this sector through wider initiatives such as the Government's £1.1 billion AI Hardware Plan is expected to boost private investment into companies across the UK semiconductor sector.