Sovereign AI Unit Quarterly Update #1
Since my appointment a little under 3 months ago, the Sovereign AI Unit has been working hard to establish its structure, team and a unique offer to founders, while continuing the day-to-day work of supporting our most successful British-based AI companies.
You can follow regular updates from the Sovereign AI Unit through DSIT, the Minister for AI and the Secretary of State for DSIT on all social media platforms. But in the interests of further transparency, I plan to release a quarterly report like this with updates on our focus and progress. My hope is this will raise awareness of the great work being done by the Unit, and to make sure you keep us accountable and on mission in the years to come.
Feedback on its format and content is always welcome – but please keep in mind that this represents my own views and our work purely within this Unit - on which I'm ruthlessly focussed. While I will be as transparent as I can be, the nature of the work we do means sensitive commercial or security work will be omitted.
Quarterly Report #1
In her speech at Bloomberg’s Offices last week, the Secretary of State for DSIT succinctly laid out the goal and approach of the Sovereign AI team:
“We have announced our new Sovereign AI Unit to accelerate success, by investing in and supporting UK AI companies…today I can announce the Unit will be a standalone team, highly empowered, operating with maximum autonomy. So it can be fast and decisive.
Because that’s what the AI start up sector demands. Government adapting itself to the speed and pace of business, not the other way around.
And so we say loud and clear to UK start up founders, particularly in AI: You are our future and we will do everything we can to back you.”
This is our promise, and the operating principles, at the heart of the Sovereign AI Unit.
What AI sovereignty means continues to be the focus of global debate. Some argue that Sovereign AI means countries should work together to “pause” AI development. Others argue each country must own each part of the AI infrastructure stack themselves, from electron to token.
In my view, these options are technologically untenable, and economic and cultural dead-ends. Instead, the UK must continue to adopt and contribute to the best infrastructure and tools available to us globally, supporting and shaping the development of AI tools for everyone.
But we can’t be blind to the macroeconomic and political circumstances we’re in. As well as being part of AI’s global development, sovereignty demands that we have both resilience in our own AI infrastructure, and sectors of global excellence in AI anchored in the UK. Resilience and excellence.
So, as the Secretary of State put it above, the goal of the Sovereign AI unit is to accelerate the success of these UK-anchored companies working in areas of AI we believe are of national priority, to benefit the wealth, health, security and values of the UK.
My role as Chair is to help establish the structure of the Unit, hire the team and provide on-going support on the strategy and tactics in relentless pursuit of this outcome.
We have unique tools within Government to achieve this. This includes capital to make direct equity investments as little as £1M to over £20M, which we hope to deploy into dozens of companies in the years to come on commercial terms.
Perhaps more importantly, alongside this direct capital, we can grant access to domestic compute, unique datasets and provide advance market commitments that could uniquely transform and accelerate a company’s success.
What we are not is a policy unit. While we recognise that there are many important areas of policy development required to ensure the UK is a great place to anchor a global AI company - there are many other parts of Government that lead on this work. However, we hope our work does help inform some of those decisions.
We are also not a grant making institution. We are here to invest our resources and capital on a commercial basis. There are many well-funded programmes to support research and R&D in the UK, such as Innovate UK, ARIA and others. Every decision we make is with the view that the taxpayer should be rewarded for taking a risk and supporting AI companies. Not only is this fair for the taxpayer, I feel strongly that better decisions are made when you know performance will be measured by a concrete benchmark, in this case financial returns amongst other metrics.
We will share more on the soft and hard metrics the Unit will work towards in coming months. You can judge our success against these goals and operating principles. Below is a summary of our major efforts in the last 3 months.
Q1 2026 Goals, Progress and Requests.
Structure:
Our goal for Q1 is to establish the legal and operating structure of the Unit and be ready to launch under this new structure by April 2026. Given the unique levers we have at our disposal, and the skills required to deliver them, this is no easy task. However, we have a model in place which will allow for as much independence of our Investment Committee as possible, while embedding them with world-leading experts in the Civil Service, so that we can match the speed founders should demand of us as investing partners while providing unique types of support.
Despite the difficult challenge of balancing autonomy with proper governance, we are well on track to formalise this structure on a quicker timeline than many new commercial VCs can achieve.
Team:
Our goal for Q1 is to establish the leadership of the investing function for the new Unit, and bring in expertise from both the commercial world, as well as experienced civil servants who can help us execute at speed on our offer.
We have already started on this effort with 6 new joiners in under 3 months. This includes Josephine Kant, who brings experience in AI and venture through roles with Google and the tech-incubator Y-Combinator, and Konstantin Sietzy, who was critical in the successful set-up of AISI.
We are now actively hiring for three partner roles to form our investment committee, starting with a Managing Partner who will sit on the investment committee and lead on executive decisions across the Unit as well. We have had over 70 applications, and we have interviewed over a dozen candidates so far.
We would love for interested people to apply directly by emailing a CV or sharing a LinkedIn profile, along with a short introduction as to why you would be relevant for the role to Eliza.Cudmore@dsit.gov.uk. She will share a more details and the process back to relevant parties. Below is a fuller description of the role.
Managing Partner Job Description:
The Managing Partner role in the Sovereign AI Unit is a pivotal leadership position, critical to the success of the Unit’s mission to strengthen the UK’s sovereign capability in frontier AI. The Managing Partner will sit at the centre of the Unit. They will help define the Unit’s investment strategy across the full range of the Unit’s priority areas, and oversee the sourcing, evaluation and execution of the deals that will define the Unit. It requires a rare blend of deep investment expertise, understanding of AI and strategic leadership, with strong credibility and influence across the AI ecosystem.
Key responsibilities:
- Develop and lead a high-conviction investment strategy for the Sovereign AI Unit, shaping strategic priorities and designing a due diligence process in line with market best practice.
- Lead the sourcing, evaluation and execution of deals across the full range of the Unit’s portfolio.
- Act as a central convener between industry, government and investors, representing
- Attract and retain world-class talent to enhance the UK’s position in AI
Who are we looking for?
- Currently working as an investor either in a VC firm, Corporate venture team or equivalent.
- Have a minimum of ~5 years' experience as an investor. Has lead investment rounds.
- Track record of investments across frontier tech, showing adaptability of investment thesis and a capability to show conviction and win investment deals..
- Exposure to AI industry.
- Built, or managed, teams before.
- Has a strong network and credentials within the UK AI & VC ecosystem and beyond
Offer to founders:
While we set-up the structure and the team to lead this new fund, we are also working hard on refining the offer to founders and fellow investors to make the SovAI proposition the most compelling we can. We want to be a first-choice partner when you think about scaling an AI company in the UK.
As a starting point, SovAI will invest as a leader or follower on commercial terms directly into AI companies within our strategy. We will match the commercial and legal terms of the world’s leading venture firms, working alongside them, and commit to operating with the same pace, passion, risk-appetite and ambition as them as well.
But capital is just one of the many constraints facing founders in critical parts of the AI economy today, and we hope to provide much more than that.
We will also be providing compute directly to companies, via grants of 5k - 500k GPU hours that can come with a cash investment. We have already started making small commitments like this and intend to ramp up the offer significantly over the course of the year, to meet the AI Opportunities plan of 20x’ing the amount of domestic compute available in the UK in the years to come.
And we will be making even more important offers to AI companies in the UK through our advanced market commitments – where the Unit will directly procure solutions that meet our bar for other parts of Government, giving the best AI teams a guarantee they will have a customer if they can build a world-leading product Government needs.
To test these offers with the market we have kicked off a series of interviews with dozens of early-stage AI companies in the UK. If you would like to provide feedback on this model, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me or Josephine on Josephine.Kant@dsit.gov.uk.
Launch
We are working hard to be fully operational by April 2026, while continuing our work in other areas. We will announce more details about that launch, and ways you can learn more or engage with the Unit in the coming months. So, stay tuned!
Thank you all for your enthusiasm and patience. I hope you found this update useful.
Best,
James