On Sept. 16 the United States and United Kingdom announced the Tech Prosperity Deal. Launched at a major bilateral summit attended both by heads of state and of frontier AI labs and technology companies (including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman), it promises an unprecedented $200 billion investment from U.S. firms into the United Kingdom’s AI ecosystem.
The agreement has been celebrated as a game-changer for U.K. prosperity, security and sovereignty. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared it a “generational” advancement in the special relationship, expanding U.K. jobs, innovation, healthcare, and science.
Starmer’s assessment is spot-on: this deal does change the game. But it is a game the United Kingdom might already be losing. The U.K. will become more beholden to U.S. technology firms and less able to shape the important technologies it hopes to build on top of. This is a premature – but not irreversible – sacrifice of its AI sovereignty.
The Art of the Deal?
The Tech Prosperity Deal is wide-ranging, covering nuclear power, quantum technology, AI infrastructure, and AI applications in research, science, engineering and business. It prioritizes building out data centers in designated AI Growth Zones, as well as U.S.-U.K. collaboration on drug discovery and fusion energy.
But the feasibility of this deal is as of yet unclear, as is its ability to supercharge the United Kingdom’s AI ambitions.
While the deal has been framed as a boost for Britain’s AI industry, most companies involved – including Nvidia, OpenAI, Blackstone, Google, and Microsoft – are based across the Atlantic. Although framed as a “building on British [AI] success stories” (like Deepmind, Wayve and Arm), the design of the deal might very well kneecap homegrown alternatives that might struggle to compete with U.S. heavyweights or stay in the U.K. (Google’s 2014 acquisition of U.K.-grown Deepmind is front-of-mind.)
Critics of the deal like former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg have decried the U.K.’s decision to tie itself to the U.S. and lose its ability to retain “good people and good ideas.” Supporters of bolstering UK and European technology sovereignty have also disparaged London’s choice to opt for “off-the-shelf sovereignty,” spotlighting the risks to national security triggered by vendor lock-in. Converging with Washington on technology risks entrenching unsustainable or even politically dangerous and unreliable dependencies on U.S. technology providers.
Industry and security aside, the deal is a byproduct of global AI hype. This is dangerous. It is promising to see British jobs and wellbeing front-and-center of a new international partnership, particularly as the country faces an unemployment and healthcare crisis. Broad-scale transformation is evidently and urgently needed.
But this government – and the last – have rightly attracted criticism for confusing promises and potential for capability: both of the technology itself and the United Kingdom’s ability to deploy it.
Experts tracking AI’s implications for people and society warn that U.K. leaders have championed broad-scale investment and delayed regulation to reach the “promised land” of AI transformation at any cost: that is, before determining what it is that AI can do for the British people. Whether London’s AI ambitions are environmentally feasible is another matter entirely.
A Sovereignty Puzzle
The Tech Prosperity Deal was brokered to supercharge U.K. AI sovereignty – that is to say, building out and innovating emerging technology and infrastructure in the national interest, ranging from AI data centers to quantum computers and civil nuclear energy projects.
In some lights, it will do exactly that. An important pathway will be ensuring sustained access to U.S. frontier AI labs crowded at the front of the global AI race.
But in other respects, it may very well jeopardize the country’s autonomy and further entrench its dependence on a handful of U.S. providers. The deal is surprising in that it is both an unnecessary and premature capitulation. Rather than being caught between a rock and a hard place, the United Kingdom appears to have negotiated the deal from a position of relative strength.
Why this is the case is a story not only about the United Kingdom’s ambitions and limitations, but also about middle powers more generally in pursuit of technology sovereignty. Middle powers lack the capacity of AI superpowers like the United States. and China, but are still eager to influence, develop and deploy AI in line with national interests.
Strategies for building so-called “sovereign AI” have surged in recent years. Although different in scope and ambition, most share common themes, like ensuring AI aligns with and advances national values (initiatives like Eurostack or Singapore’s SEALION come to mind), or deploying AI in pursuit of economic competitiveness and governance credibility. The U.K.’s AI plans pursue economic security, enabled by “sufficient, secure and sustainable AI infrastructure.”
Where countries stand on global AI capacity depends where they sit. Do they have the right combination of “enabling” capabilities (like a robust energy grid, talent – an area the U.K. excels in – and an industrial base)? Do these enablers support “primary” capabilities: access to advanced AI models trained and operated with sufficient computing power?
Political rhetoric on regional or even global AI leadership aside, most middle power plans for sovereign AI reflect the sobering realities of a two-horse race. Competing with the U.S. and China is futile. They hold the world’s most powerful labs (notwithstanding unpredictable upsets, like DeepSeek’s open-source explosion earlier this year). Together, they possess over 90 percent of global AI supercomputers (with the United States leading by a large margin).
This reality means states like the United Kingdom face a strategic dilemma (hinged on the assumption that building ever-more powerful AI capabilities is necessary and inevitable). How should they position themselves to maximize their sovereignty in a race they can’t win? What are the risks of getting this positioning wrong?
There are different pathways. Small countries like Taiwan and the Netherlands have curated specialized offerings in niche parts of the global AI supply chain. Blocs like the European Union have opted for developing shared capabilities and building “AI factories.” Others have picked a side in the U.S.-China AI race: the United Arab Emirates has opted for U.S. over Chinese offerings, as the first international Stargate partner and soon-to-be host of the world’s largest data center.
The Winning Bet
It is unsurprising that the United Kingdom has picked a side. A comprehensive U.S.-U.K. partnership on AI does not come out of the blue. It comes off the heels of years of strategic investment and cross-pollination, not to mention an enduring transatlantic alliance.
The Starmer government has pursued closer political alignment with the Trump administration in other domains as well, reportedly putting digital tax concessions on the negotiating table (although Technology Secretary Liz Kendall confirms the new deal excludes digital tax).
On the international stage, in February, the United Kingdom. joined the United States as the only two participating non-signatories of the Paris Statement on AI, a symbolically important declaration on global AI cooperation. While not mimicking the U.S. deregulatory spiral on AI, London has delayed a comprehensive AI bill, distancing itself from the E.U.’s more comprehensive (but also watered-down) approach.
What is surprising is that the United Kingdom was not forced to entrench its dependency on U.S. technology. Nor did London have to politically distance itself from Brussels on technology. Neither of these outcomes appeared to be a foregone conclusion before the summit. Viewed from above, the U.K. side of the deal triggers concern: a country falsely convinced they must negotiate from inevitable weakness.
There are reasons for this approach. The United Kingdom does not dominate global AI research and development (R&D). However, it does consistently punch above its weight in the global impact of its research ecosystem and innovation pipeline. After all, many U.K. spinouts and startups are bought up by U.S. firms. Geopolitics experts have called for a strategic U.K. response to U.S. H1B visa reversals: the country might outcompete other middle powers by distinguishing itself as a hub for global talent. There are valid fears that the deal will do little to stem an asymmetrical talent flow to U.S. shores and companies.
On data, the United Kingdom’s data and data-sharing ecosystem is certainly not perfect but it is relatively robust. Proposed public initiatives on data (namely, the National Data Library) and access to compute (via the AI Research Resource) could supercharge its innovation ecosystem. But the new deal’s reference to U.S. firm access to and the use of U.K. datasets – like Biobank – might be reminiscent of a 2023 contract to build out the NHS data platform offered to the U.S.-based Palantir, not U.K. competitors. This resulted in outcry, with the British Medical Association calling it “deeply worrying.”
Anxieties about the security implications of dependency on politically powerful but not infallible U.S. technology providers are widespread. They have reached a fever pitch in Brussels, with key influencers proposing different solutions to mitigate this dependency.
While the U.S.-U.K. deal will by no means prevent U.K. technology deal-making with the European Union, it sends a powerful political message to Brussels. Policymakers hoping for closer E.U.-U.K. cooperation on AI – for autonomy and collective security – might well be disappointed.
The partnership also raises tricky questions about U.K. entanglements with this powerful coalition of U.S. technology companies and their leaders. Oracle – close to the Trump administration and tied to U.K. policy influencers – has promised to expand the AI infrastructure provided to the U.K. government to the tune of $5 billion. How might companies like Oracle – acting autonomously, or in line with U.S. AI ambitions – set and disrupt technology agendas in the United Kingdom? How will U.S. technology firms compete and cooperate in the build-out of infrastructure U.K. soil?
In years to come, the Tech Prosperity Deal may be remembered less of a triumph of British sovereignty than its proponents hope.
