Artificial Intelligence
How AI is changing the way technology is built, sold and run.
Sovereign AI’s £100m scheme makes Whitehall an early customer
The government has opened four competitions for British AI startups, with upfront payment and intellectual property left with the builder. Whether it shifts who wins public AI work depends on what follows the pilots
Lanarkshire’s £202m guarantee is the real price of sovereign compute
Lenders backed DataVita’s Lanarkshire data centers only once the state covered 80% of their tranche. That prices the risk in ‘UK AI infrastructure’, and with every megawatt leased to CoreWeave, partners should sell residency rather than racks
Government opens its first AI Growth Lab to law firms and lawtech
Firms building or using AI in legal services can now put their regulatory questions to four regulators at once. The sandbox offers guidance, and nothing that would shield a firm from its regulators
The CMA’s Copilot case won’t check small firms’ Microsoft renewals
The CMA is examining how Microsoft told home users about plan changes that added Copilot at a higher price. But small firms facing higher Microsoft 365 Business prices from July must police their own renewals
Beyond the seat: what Nadella’s consumption pivot means for CSP partners
Speaking on Microsoft’s fourth-quarter call on 29 July, Satya Nadella said the business model is moving beyond per-seat to per-seat-plus-consumption. Partners built on seat resale must own the consumption conversation before Microsoft’s account teams do
ONS finds a third of UK firms with 10 or more staff use AI
Official survey data shows business adoption has almost tripled since 2023, but the typical adopter uses fewer than two AI technologies and few have trained most of their staff
The SME ‘CTO as a service’ is still a discovery project
The government has published its update on the SME Digital Adoption Taskforce’s 10 recommendations. But the AI help small firms were promised is still mostly roundtables, pilots and reviews
Most UK firms using AI have no policy for it, official survey finds
More than half of small and mid-sized businesses that handle digital data use AI, but written rules on how staff use AI tools and company data lag far behind
AI sandboxes are only worth having if small firms get through the door
The King’s Speech promises legal powers to relax rules for AI trials. But unless startups win places and successful trials quickly become rules, SME buyers will see little of the benefit
UK small businesses keep AI on a tight budget, Ionos survey finds
Cost, time and trust are holding back spending among UK firms with up to 250 staff. Those that will pay want tools that save hours, at prices below what European peers accept
Sovereign AI opens with a Callosum stake and six compute allocations
The government’s £500m unit says it will act like a venture fund. Its first moves suggest that supercomputer time, visas and a route to public buyers matter as much as its cash
Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview signals a cybersecurity reckoning
The company is withholding its most capable model from public release, partnering instead with more than 40 tech firms to hunt vulnerabilities that decades of human effort never found