Computing, quantum and AI hand-in-hand
The UK is positioning itself as a global leader in artificial intelligence and wants to become a leading country in quantum technologies. National AI policy is increasingly intertwined with other policies, especially quantum technology and computing, forming the basis for the next era of scientific discovery. AI and quantum are both dependent on advanced computing infrastructure. These three areas, computing, quantum and AI, are complementary infrastructure layers the UK government is developing in parallel. The Government has allocated significant funding for AI and quantum, £2 billion investment between 2026 and 2030, to support AI-driven scientific breakthroughs and £2 billion investment in quantum technologies. The UK actively collaborates with global tech leaders but at the same time wants to develop national capabilities in these fields.
The UK’s Modern Industrial strategy targets five priority areas representing frontier industries and technologies: advanced materials, nuclear fusion, medical research, engineering biology and quantum technology. The Digital and Technologies sector plan names AI as one of the six frontier technologies which are essential to driving growth. Several UK strategy and policy papers highlight AI, quantum and computing as tools for innovation, growth and opportunities.
Quantum leap
The UK wrote its National Quantum Technologies Programme already in 2014 and was one of the first countries to publish a national vision for quantum. According to TechUK, the policies bear fruit: the UK is home to 11% of the world’s quantum startups and has attracted 12% of global quantum private equity investment.
In 2026, the Government has announced up to £2 billion to support the development and commercialisation of quantum technologies. This includes more than £1 billion infrastructure investments over the next four years, and the first of its kind procurement programme, ProQure to support scaling quantum computing in the UK. The Government has announced that over £500 million will be dedicated to Quantum computing - helping companies scale and develop new uses for technology in areas like pharmaceuticals, financial services, and energy. Over £400 million will be directed to support breakthroughs in sensing and navigation and the skills and infrastructure needed to bring these technologies to market. Funding will be also used into the UK’s 5 National Quantum Research Hubs delivered by UK Research and Innovation, with researchers working in healthcare, clean energy, and national security projects. Efforts will be made to support the skills and infrastructure that underpins the development of quantum technologies.
National Quantum Computing Centre in Harwell is the key organization in delivering the Government’s Quantum plans. It can work in peace since it has secured its funding for next ten years.
AI for Science Strategy
The UK has a centuries-long history of transformative scientific discovery. Alan Turing, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, just to mention some, have helped in providing the foundations for modern AI.
AI Opportunities Action Plan was published in January 2026. To deliver the plan the UK government is investing £2 billion between 2026-2030. Part of the funding goes to implementing AI for Science Strategy (2025) which signals a strong commitment to embedding AI into the research ecosystem. The strategy has two objectives. To develop frontier capability in AI-driven science and to ensure the UK retains its position of global leadership. The Strategy rests on three pillars: expanding access to high quality AI-driven data, investing in national compute infrastructure and developing skills and talent. For universities and research organisations this means greater access to national-scale compute resources and AI infrastructure and new funding streams for AI-enabled science.
The strategy introduces 15 actions. These include for instance funding research in methodological implications of integrating AI into scientific research (Metascience). UKRI is due to scale-up its data storage and ensure all relevant data is stored curated and made compliant with FAIR principles by 2030. UKRI should publish its revised data policy in 2026. UKRI will launch pilot projects for collecting underrepresented ‘dark data’ to boost model performance. Investing in people, their training, upskilling and reskilling and educating the next researcher generations, is a central part of the delivery plan.
National Compute Plan
According to the National Compute Plan published in July 2025, the UK will invest up to £2 billion to deliver a diverse, joined-up and user centered compute ecosystem. The aim is to Establish National Supercomputing Centers to curate datasets, build software assets and deliver a skills pipeline to support a broad range of users to access and utilise computing power. The UK wants to partner with like-minded countries and computing centres to expand access to a broader range of research infrastructure, facilitating collaboration and skills and knowledge exchange.
One new tool is to develop AI Growth Zones where the area, together with the Government aims to establish company and user-friendly environments to attract data centers, AI developers and end users.
Isambard AI hosted by the University of Bristol is one of the world’s most powerful and greenest supercomputers. Together with Dawn in Cambridge university and EPCC in Edinburgh they form the core of the National compute infrastructure. Aim is to develop a network of compute clusters across the UK’s research-intensive ecosystem in partnership with Jisc – the UK’s National Research and Education Network - academia and industry.
Comment: Investments in computing, quantum and AI are noteworthy, especially in financially challenging times. The UK government has succeeded in justifying investments by emphasising the expected returns to the economy and the positive implications to the society and its citizens at large with better public services, delivering new jobs, harnessing the technology to level-up health care and speed up the research of new drugs and treatments, and strengthen national security, for instance.
Birgitta Vuorinen
birgitta.vuorinen(at)gov.fi
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