UK Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has pledged legal reforms to direct pension fund capital into British AI startups, building on a voluntary accord where 17 large UK pension providers agreed to invest at least 10% of defined-contribution default funds in private markets by 2030, with 5% earmarked for domestic assets — potentially unlocking £25 billion. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has also won parliamentary authority to mandate domestic investment allocations. Despite these ambitions, American companies dominate UK government AI contracts: Anthropic won a GOV.UK assistant contract, and Palantir secured a £240.6 million MoD analytics deal, with its £330 million NHS contract now under political fire over data sovereignty concerns. A £1.1 billion AI hardware plan was also announced, though critics note most UK AI infrastructure still runs on American hardware and key British chipmakers like Graphcore have been acquired by foreign buyers.
