The Case for Britain
Why is it the right place to invest in AI community-building?
Lately, we’ve been considering the benefits and drawbacks of basing UK AI Forum in Britain. Obviously we’re somewhat biased, since we’ve already invested a lot into building our lives here, but this venture would be pointless if Britain wasn’t a promising place to build a community of AI researchers.
In our discussions, we’ve found that most people are still evaluating the promising ‘hubs’ for the AI research community in terms of where the labs are (mostly SF) or where the biggest talent concentrations exist (SF again, plus some scattered academic centres). But we think this misses the bigger strategic picture: that the question isn't just where much of the work is happening now, it's where the institutional infrastructure exists to influence how hubs develop globally. At UK AI Forum, we believe Britain is primed to be such a place, thanks to being at the forefront of AI Governance, making concerted efforts to expand compute capacity and collaborate with big labs, as well as the global talent that cities such as London, Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, and Cardiff attract.
The AIS community that’s already here
It’s impossible to create an in-person community without people. Looking at this map of AI safety/security organisations around the world, we’re happy to see that the UK is pretty well-represented. Indeed, if we’re just talking about the small geographic area covered by London, Cambridge, and Oxford alone, we can see that the UK is replete with opportunities to acquire training and careers in AI safety. This naturally lends itself well to fostering community - the UK is a tiny island full of purpose and potential.
If a person wishes to gain training, for instance, there are plenty of UK-based fellowships to apply for: BlueDot Impact, MATS, ARENA, GovAI, ERA, MARS, LASR, and FIG, to name a few. Once people complete fellowships and gain research experiences, one can only assume that they might want to apply these skills in a job. Fortunately, the UK boasts a variety of research labs and institutes that offer such career opportunities. Among these are UK AISI (and DSIT more broadly), Apollo, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, the Centre for Long-Term Resilience, the Centre for the Governance of AI, the Ada Lovelace Institute, the AI Governance Initiative, and the Institute for Law and AI. Of course, startups are also cropping up all the time. To meet others in the field, many researchers make use of the London Initiative for Safe AI (LISA), which serves as a prominent hub for networking and co-working.
Here in Cambridge, much of the AI safety community is based out of Meridian, which houses organisations and programmes like CAISH, MARS, ERA, Geodesic Research, UK AI Forum (and we are all the better for it), and its own Visiting Researcher Programme, which is set to expand a great deal in the coming few months. It seems like there is no better time to begin connecting researchers across the UK, especially since they are already so keen on coming and staying here.
Security Infrastructure
In February 2025, UK's AI Safety Institute rebranded itself to the AI Security Institute. This highlights a strategic pivot that indicated AISI’s focus on concrete security threats, including chemical and biological warfare, cybersecurity, and fraud. Obviously, we have continued to see familiar AI safety research agendas being covered by different teams (i.e. control, alignment, autonomous systems, safeguards), but these have become nicely embedded within the UK’s political decision-making machinery. The results of AISI’s efforts speak for themselves: they've recruited over 50 technical staff from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Oxford, and they're operating "like a startup" within government with substantial funding and priority access to frontier models. The institute now partners directly with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and National Cyber Security Centre as well. We are continuing to witness AISI’s growth and influence over UK national policy.
Compute
The government has committed to expanding sovereign compute capacity by at least 20x by 2030, and they're backing this up with AI Growth Zones starting with a planned 500MW data center at Culham.
While the UK's efforts may not match the scale of US federal investments the government has allocated $200 million in mandatory R&D funding that will bolster efforts to harness the capacity of AI to accelerate scientific research in 2025 alone, and the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) agencies’ requested investment is $3316.1 million, the UK’s focused approach creates compelling advantages for AI researchers. As, the UK is positioned to be Europe’s most accessible destination for serious AI research; this is particularly true since Europe’s AI landscape is quite fragmented, heavily relying on the coordination between member states.
Strategic alliances with big labs
February 2025 also saw the announcement of UK-Anthropic partnership, facilitated by the new Sovereign AI unit, which will explore Claude integration into government services. This doesn’t seem to just be a vendor relationship, rather, Britain is actively piloting frontier AI in public services while maintaining security standards.
The government has plans for additional agreements with leading AI companies as part of a systematic approach to public-private partnerships. This creates ecosystem effects where companies locate R&D near their government partnerships.
Ability to attract international talent
GDM’s London headquarters already provides a pipeline from academic research to commercial application, but the broader talent ecosystem is what's really compelling. The AI Security Institute's recruitment of senior alumni from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Oxford demonstrates the kind of talent circulation between academia, industry, and government that's much harder to achieve elsewhere.
Also, in light of the USA’s recent, and ongoing, budget cuts to scientific research, Britain is well-placed to attract such talent. This is especially true because the UK's immigration framework creates systematic rather than ad-hoc talent attraction (with Global Talent Visas, Graduate routes, High Potential Individual pathways, and Visitor Research Visas, there are reliable ways for highly skilled workers to join the AI safety community, in contrast to other European countries as well as the USA where immigration is notoriously difficult nowadays).
London's established tech ecosystem also provides much lower-friction pathways for international AI researchers than most alternatives.
A growing startup scene
Beyond the UK government’s support, the AI community in the UK has been thoroughly endorsed by big tech companies; 2025 alone has seen giant ramp ups in investments in the UK, with Microsoft announcing that it’s investing $30 Billion in the next three years as well as others such as Nvidia, Google, OpenAI and Salesforce declaring plans that amount to over $40 Billion.
Encouragingly, these companies span hardware as well as research, making the UK poised to be at the forefront of AI in a very broad, and very real way. Based on how the UK is reorienting towards supporting innovation, it’s clear that the next three to five years will see an even greater emphasis on building out AI infrastructure, and that the UK is the place to do it. If you’re an AI researcher and you want to found your own startup or independent lab, there has never been a better time to do it in the UK.
Why does this matter for future research?
As other jurisdictions retreat from serious AI safety work, Britain's institutional commitment creates space for technical safety researchers to do meaningful work. The UK’s integrated ecosystem allows safety/security researchers to influence both policy development and commercial practices simultaneously.
Timing matters too. We're likely in a narrow window where:
Governments are still figuring out their AI strategies
The major labs might be more willing to work with governments, particularly from a cybersecurity standpoint
The technology is advancing fast enough that early governance choices might help lock in long-term development trajectories
Britain has assembled the institutional infrastructure to actually influence these trajectories while this window is still open.
Here at UK AI Forum are working to leverage this concentrated institutional support, excellent talent pipeline, and international relevance to connect AI safety/security researchers and help them make faster progress on the most challenging issues of our time. We’re putting on socials, speaker series, and a big conference this upcoming December; we hope to see you soon.
You can keep in touch with us here.
