{"id":490585,"date":"2026-03-23T08:10:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T08:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490585\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T08:10:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T08:10:18","slug":"can-london-develop-its-own-digital-hub-jensen-huang-is-betting-on-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490585\/","title":{"rendered":"Can London develop its own digital hub? Jensen Huang is betting on it"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the top floor of University College London\u2019s Bloomsbury headquarters, Professor Geraint Rees points out a string of landmarks that make up the city\u2019s so-called Knowledge Quarter.<\/p>\n

There is the steel-vaulted roof of the Francis Crick Institute, a mammoth lab complex in King\u2019s Cross, and One Triton Square, a \u00a3400 million hub for tech start-ups on nearby Regent\u2019s Place. Still being built is UCL\u2019s \u00a3281 million neurology and dementia research centre. <\/p>\n

But the crown jewel for Rees, UCL\u2019s vice-provost of research, innovation and global engagement, is not a specific building but a tie-up with the US tech titan Nvidia \u2014 a partnership that, he hopes, will quicken the transformation of the area into a rival to science and technology hubs across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI walked into a coffee shop and for the first time I overheard someone pitching their new company to somebody. It\u2019s something you would hear in Silicon Valley, or you might hear in [Boston\u2019s] Kendall Square,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"ProfessorProfessor Geraint Rees from University College London hopes the Knowledge Quarter in King\u2019s Cross can rival similar hubs in the United StatesUCL<\/p>\n

UCL signed a landmark \u201cstrategic partnership\u201d<\/a> with the chipmaker last year. This came amid a wider investment blitz by Nvidia, which has pledged to plough \u00a32 billion into British companies at the forefront of the AI boom.<\/p>\n

Jensen Huang<\/a>, the Taiwan-born billionaire who leads Nvidia, has emerged as a particularly ardent evangelist for British tech, predicting last year that \u201cthe first trillion-dollar company in the UK will be an AI company\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ministers certainly hope this will be the case; last year, Sir Keir Starmer launched an aggressive push to turn Britain into an \u201cartificial intelligence superpower<\/a>\u201d as he tries to jumpstart the UK\u2019s stuttering economy. <\/p>\n

Huang has said he believes the UK is having a \u201cGoldilocks\u201d moment for AI, citing the country\u2019s \u201camazing start-ups\u201d and the ease with which the supercomputers needed for AI can be built here. <\/p>\n

\"PrimeSir Keir Starmer with Jensen Huang in London last year. The Nvidia founder is placing a big bet on British tech. Below, he receives the 2025 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering from the KingCrown Copyright<\/p>\n

\"KingYUI MOK\/PA<\/p>\n

Nvidia worked with UCL for many years before agreeing to form the official partnership last year. At the core of the tie-up is a drive to create \u201csovereign AI\u201d in Britain \u2014 a digital and physical infrastructure for artificial intelligence<\/a>, similar to the national grid for power. This infrastructure is the one missing element in Britain so far, Huang has said publicly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt codifies your culture, your society\u2019s intelligence, your common sense, your history \u2014 you own your own data,\u201d Huang previously told the World Governments Summit in Dubai. <\/p>\n

\u201c[Sovereign AI] is the idea that it\u2019s important for the UK to have its own ability to train and deploy advanced AI models, and to have the people and the skills to do that, as well as the hardware and the computing to do it,\u201d said Rees. \u201cThe alternative is just to pay for somebody else, somewhere else in the world, to do it.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear why the latter could be disadvantageous. No country wants to have its AI turned off by a foreign provider, or sensitive data to end up in the wrong hands \u2014 especially at a time of global turmoil. <\/p>\n

Advocates believe sovereign AI initiatives could transform the efficiency of public services. One of the projects on which Nvidia and UCL are working is UK-LLM (large language model), which \u201cthinks\u201d in the multiple languages spoken across Britain \u2014 such as Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Cornish \u2014 rather than simply translating them. This allows for easier automation and reduces the likelihood of errors in high-volume administrative work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At UCL, the tech giant is also fuelling research into how \u201cdigital twins\u201d \u2014 in effect, virtual models created with AI \u2014 could be used to predict and treat health conditions such as strokes. \u201cThat\u2019s the kind of thing we\u2019re going to see in the NHS tomorrow, I believe,\u201d said Rees. <\/p>\n

Under way as well are research projects in quantum computing and polar observation. Nvidia is providing grants, donating its highly sought-after graphics processing units (GPUs), and access to its platforms and products.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Students are certainly seeing the benefit. This month, UCL hosted a \u201chackathon\u201d event where groups of them were given the task of developing prototype new AI tools. <\/p>\n

\"AStaff from Nvidia\u2019s global robotics division held a workshop at UCL after the tie-up with the universityUCL<\/p>\n

\"AUCL<\/p>\n

The winners \u2014 Lucas Lim, Joe Tan and Shashank\u00a0Durgad from UCL, and Cambridge University student Desmond Zee \u2014 came up with a tool that \u201cpolices\u201d autonomous AI agents to stop them going rogue. Their prize is a trip to Nvidia\u2019s GPU Technology Conference \u2014 in effect, the Davos of AI \u2014 this month. <\/p>\n

Questions have been raised over the merits of building \u201csovereign\u201d AI for Britain based on American tech. Writing in The Guardian last year, Matt Davies of the Ada Lovelace Institute, a body dedicated to ensuring that \u201cdata and AI work for people and society\u201d, warned about \u201cthe quid pro quo that comes with investment from big tech\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet if the UK wants to grow its AI capabilities, there aren\u2019t many other options beyond US firms, said Saul Klein, founder of the London-based venture capital firm Phoenix Court. <\/p>\n

\"SaulSaul Klein BETTY LAURA ZAPATA FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n

Klein agrees that Britain needs to build \u201cmore resilience, more independence and more leverage\u201d, but he is not so worried about the role played by big American firms. \u201cGoogle, Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft etc are [already] big parts of the UK economy,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The tie-up between Nvidia<\/a> and UCL comes amid a flurry of investment in London\u2019s Knowledge Quarter. Once known for deprivation and vice, King\u2019s Cross and the areas around it have been transformed in recent decades. In 2024 The Economist magazine dubbed it a \u201cmiracle\u201d and \u201cthe best hope for the British economy\u201d. <\/p>\n

According to UCL predictions, the quarter will add an extra \u00a31.5 billion to the economy every year if it continues its present trajectory. <\/p>\n

\"AerialLondon\u2019s Knowledge Quarter, with Google\u2019s UK headquarters located to the right behind King\u2019s Cross stationADRIAN MARS\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Synthesia, an AI video-creation business co-founded by UCL professor Lourdes Agapito, was recently valued at $4 billion (\u00a33 billion) following a $200 million funding round, and has taken on a 20,000 sq ft headquarters at 20 Triton Street in Regent\u2019s Place.<\/p>\n

\u201cLondon is buzzing with AI talent,\u201d Agapito said. \u201cThere\u2019s not just universities and start-ups but also the big tech labs. At the beginning we only had ten people, now there\u2019s more than 600 \u2014 so many jobs that we\u2019ve created.\u201d <\/p>\n

Klein argues that the area should be considered a \u201cnew Square Mile\u201d of even more vital importance to Britain\u2019s future than the City. \u201cLiterally by any kind of economic output metric, [it] is more valuable than the \u2018old\u2019 Square Mile,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Yet while the so-called innovation economy has flourished around King\u2019s Cross, there are still questions over how it can benefit all the local residents. The Somers Town neighbourhood nearby in Camden is one of Britain\u2019s most deprived neighbourhoods: more than half of all children there are living in poverty \u2014 far worse than the borough\u2019s overall average of 36.3 per cent. <\/p>\n

The local council has been trying to address this by partnering with employers on apprenticeships and other training opportunities. \u201cOur school children can say they\u2019ve had science demonstrations in the Francis Crick Institute, and our young people are doing apprenticeships at Google learning AI,\u201d said Richard Olszewski, leader of Camden council.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real challenge for the \u2018new Square Mile\u2019 is not how much it can grow, but whether it can grow inclusively,\u201d said Klein, whose firm donates a significant chunk of its profits to causes in the local area. \u201cThe Silicon Valley<\/a> innovation model is extremely economically successful \u2014 but the distribution of dividends never really went beyond the founders and the investors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet it is precisely the reputation of Silicon Valley \u2014 as a place for the brightest minds to get rich quick \u2014 that is contributing to wider worries about Britain\u2019s ability to hang on to talent. Last November a report by the science and technology committee of the House of Lords urged ministers to make Britain a more attractive place to scale businesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AerialSilicon Valley in CaliforniaGetty IMAGES<\/p>\n

This came after the pharmaceuticals giants Merck and AstraZeneca both cancelled huge planned investments within the space of a week. Merck U-turned on a proposed \u00a31 billion research centre in London<\/a>, claiming the government was not investing enough in the sector, while AstraZeneca put the brakes on a \u00a3200 million investment in its R&D facility in Cambridge amid a row over NHS charges.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anthony Hills, regional director for the UK & Ireland at Nvidia, said AI was \u201cone of the areas where capital and ambition have continued to come into the UK\u201d despite \u201ca tougher overall environment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, British pension funds are lagging behind international counterparts such as Canada in their exposure to UK life sciences and technology, despite \u201cMansion House\u201d reforms in 2023 designed to encourage domestic funds to invest more in private companies. <\/p>\n

This is a problem because it means a large portion of the benefits of growth may go abroad. \u201cIt means that 80 to 85 per cent of the economic benefit then goes to the people who are \u2026 a nurse in Denmark, a teacher in Ontario, a worker on the Singapore metro system or the Saudi royal family,\u201d said Klein.<\/p>\n

Rees added: \u201cWhat I\u2019d like to see is that execution sped up. These companies need investment, and often the level of investment they need is in the hundreds of millions.\u201d<\/p>\n

If access to funding can be improved, Rees believes the density of start-ups, investors, academic resources and transport links within the Knowledge Quarter will prove \u201cvery powerful as a way of keeping people here\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey bump into each other and \u2026 they make new connections,\u201d he said. \u201cSilicon Valley has a density of established entrepreneurs, serial entrepreneurs, academic anchors and venture capital that is possibly one of the densest on the planet. We\u2019re not there just yet, but we\u2019re on the way towards that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the top floor of University College London\u2019s Bloomsbury headquarters, Professor Geraint Rees points out a string of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-490585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}