At the heart of it lies Silicon Valley\u2019s belief that the world is on the cusp of a tech transformation, one that could treble global wealth just as free trade did after the Cold War. If AI does supercharge growth, gains will not be evenly shared. America comes first, as its stock market growth attests. China is next. But then it\u2019s Britain. We\u2019re the only other democracy with a trillion-dollar tech sector and a university base to rival America\u2019s. The great attraction to foreign investors is that British talent comes at about a third of the price.<\/p>\n
Huang puts it thus: Britain has \u201cone of the richest AI communities anywhere on the planet\u201d, with startups such as DeepMind, ElevenLabs and Synthesia. But we lack the capital markets. Those who need serious money go to America. We also lack the infrastructure: the big, expensive data centres, supercomputers and so on. Nvidia and OpenAI see a big opportunity to build the missing pieces. They\u2019re expected to announce a multibillion-pound deal<\/a> to do so near Blyth, Northumberland.<\/p>\n The other advantage is Brexit. We got out of the EU before its great innovation crackdown, the implications of which are already being felt. Apple will soon launch earphones with simultaneous-translation technology, for example \u2014 but not in the EU because of its rules and directives. Brussels tends to see AI as something that might be developed in a Wuhan lab and regulates accordingly. Britain is more relaxed and sells itself as a place offering more freedom than anywhere else in Europe. Even many American states.<\/p>\n Some companies are giving up on Britain. Ineos and Merck did so this week, exhausted by never-ending tax raids on energy and medicine. AstraZeneca is wearying too. But our tech firms are less exposed. Perhaps because they\u2019re light on profits (with the embarrassing exception of OnlyFans<\/a>) and their billionaire investors tend to live overseas already, a natural consequence of tax-the-rich policies. This frustrates the Treasury, but being used as a tech workshop is a good second best, bringing services exports and jobs to parts of the country (like the north east) where they\u2019re most needed.<\/p>\n The draw for Silicon Valley is just how absurdly good (and affordable) our tech workers are. If Britain were America\u2019s 51st state, we\u2019d be the poorest in the union \u2014 and our salaries reflect this. Barney Hussey-Yeo, founder of the Cleo AI personal finance app<\/a>, recently observed that the best Cambridge PhD grad costs as much to hire as a Stanford student who flunked his computer science class. Software engineers there, he says, are \u201ctwo to three times\u201d more expensive than in the UK. This makes a strong case for investing in Britain, albeit depressingly similar to the case India was making a generation ago.<\/p>\n Trumpian promises may be taken with a barrel of salt, but it\u2019s harder to dismiss what\u2019s happening in Oxford. Ellison has spread more than \u00a31 billion<\/a> across various interconnected investments with research laboratories, supercomputing facilities and an oncology and preventative care clinic. His Oxonian empire will also include the 17th-century Eagle and Child pub which he is restoring and reopening in honour of JRR Tolkien and the Inklings group who used to meet there.<\/p>\n Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle, is building a vast campus in Oxford<\/p>\n EVAN VUCCI\/AP<\/p>\n The panic in Oxford now, at least in certain circles, is that Ellison is too serious. That he has bought his way into the university\u2019s ecosystem and will soon pollute it, sucking in academic talent with his vulgar, high-paying commercialism. That\u2019s certainly one way to see it. Another is to view his interest as the overdue start of a great British take-off as we move towards the US tech slipstream. And that our world-class scientists and engineers may finally be paid something close to their actual value.<\/p>\n![\"Larry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/d6572565-3556-4b85-8524-24d9f4e4d477.jpg\")
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