Technology guru suggests Britain buy more AI chips, but researchers say building an ecosystem is a complicated matter

There’s disagreement on what it would take to turn the United Kingdom into an artificial intelligence powerhouse.

Nvidia, the world’s largest supplier of graphics processing units (GPUs), has called on the UK to boost hardware investment to catch up with the United States and China in the global AI race.

During his recent visit to the country, Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive of Nvidia, told UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer that the UK could become the world’s third-largest AI ecosystem.

“The UK has the third-largest AI venture capital (VC) investment in the world. The two largest are the US and China, which is fairly obvious,” Huang said in a panel discussion with Starmer at the London Tech Week on Monday.

“The UK has one of the richest AI communities anywhere on the planet, the deepest thinkers, and the best universities … and you’re rich with great computer scientists. It’s a fantastic place for venture capital to invest.”

He said the UK is in a “Goldilocks circumstance” or a “just right” situation where the country has both investors and scientists to develop AI. (For any reader who doesn’t know the children’s story “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” a young girl named Goldilocks wanders into the home of three bears and finds that one of the bowls of porridge on the table is too hot, another too cold – but the bowl for the small bear is at the right temperature.)

Then Huang pointed out that the UK lacks the hardware infrastructure to create an AI ecosystem that can compete with the US and China.

“If you are a particle physicist, you need a linear accelerator. If you are an astronomer, you need a radio telescope,” he said. “If you’re in the world of AI, you can’t do machine learning without a machine.”

Nvidia pushes hardware but experts say UK AI needs something else