Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, CP 1337, published on 23 June 2025, what progress he has made on establishing the new Sovereign AI Unit.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has established the Sovereign AI Unit, backed by up to £500million, to back promising UK-based AI companies operating in critical domains. The Unit will provide targeted support to enable high-potential start-ups and scale ups to become national AI champions, with investment via the British Business Bank, and other government tools such as procurement, regulatory pathways and access to data, talent, and compute.

It is early days for the Unit ahead of its funding coming online from next April but already it has invested £8 million in the OpenBind consortium to accelerate drug discovery, and allocated compute via the UK’s AI Research Resource to high-quality research projects.