Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang calls UK 'perfect' place for 'AI takeoff'
Huang made the comments on a panel with UK prime minister Keir Starmer and minister for investment Poppy Gustafsson at the start of London Tech Week on Monday morning.
When asked by Gustafsson how the UK could create an AI ecosystem and drive the opportunities presented by the technology, Huang said that the country was in a "goldilocks circumstance", implying that its situation is just right for investment.
Huang said the UK has "one of the richest AI communities anywhere on the planet", adding that it has the "best universities ... amazing start-ups ... and incredible thinkers in computer science".
London-founded AI research lab DeepMind, which is also headquartered in the UK capital and is now owned by Google (GOOG, GOOGL), was among the start-ups highlighted by Huang. Autonomous driving systems start-up Wayve, AI video generation company Synthesia and AI voice generator start-up ElevenLabs, were the other names Huang mentioned.
In addition, Huang said the UK has the "third largest AI venture capital (VC) investment anywhere in the world".
"And so between these two ideas that you're rich with computer scientists, it's a fantastic place for VCs to invest, the ecosystem is really perfect for takeoff," he said.
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"It's just missing one thing: it is surprising this is the largest AI ecosystem in the world without its own infrastructure, which is the reason why we're talking about it so much, which is the reason why the prime minister's announcement of investing in ... 20 times more computing is such a big deal."
In a speech prior to the panel, opening London Tech Week, Starmer said that the government was committing an extra £1bn of funding to scale up the UK's computing power by 20 times.
"If you're in the world of AI, you do machine learning," said Huang on the panel. "You can't do machine learning without a machine.
"So the ability to build these AI supercomputers here in the UK will naturally attract more startups. It will naturally enable all of the rich ecosystem of researchers here to be able to do their life's work and I think it's just such an incredible, incredible place to invest: I'm gonna invest here.
"The UK is such a great place to invest because of all the things I've just said – we're gonna start our AI lab that you mentioned, prime minister, and we're going to partner with the UK to upskill the ecosystem of developers into AI."
In addition to ramping up the UK's computing capacity, Starmer unveiled a government partnership with 11 major companies to train 7.5 million workers in AI by 2030.
The prime minister also shared the government's plans to embed learning around AI in the education system with a "tech-first training programme". He said that this £185m investment would train up to a million young people in tech skills.
Meanwhile, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced on Monday that it was launching a "supercharged sandbox", in collaboration with Nvidia to allow City firms to experiment with AI. The financial watchdog said that under the initiative firms would be able to test out the technology using Nvidia's accelerated computing and AI enterprise software, adding that those firms successful in applying to use the "sandbox" would be able to do so from October.
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