The Chancellor has announced a package of more than £600 million to harness the opportunities of artificial intelligence while protecting the UK from AI-enabled threats, as part of today’s Autumn Budget.
The package is built around the three themes of AI security, homegrown capability and growth in every postcode. The Chancellor said it sets out a distinctively British approach to AI that defends the national interest and doesn’t leave workers behind.
On AI security, the Budget confirms £165 million for a new National AI Biosecurity Initiative, including a world first AI Biosecurity Lab, and an additional £120 million for the AI Security Institute.
A further £60 million will fund a National Cyber Shield using agentic AI to strengthen the UK’s cyber defences, including a £25 million challenge fund for UK innovators and scoping for a regulatory sandbox. A new £70 million National Exposure and Real Time Vulnerability Centre will use AI to identify weaknesses across critical infrastructure and the wider economy.
To build homegrown capability, the Sovereign AI Fund receives an additional £60 million to invest directly in promising UK AI companies, with a further £60 million for its R&D Procurement Scheme. A new UK Advanced Chip Design Academy will receive £18 million.
The package also aims to spread the benefits across the country, with £30 million for local AI partnerships, a £15 million AI Challenge Prize, an additional £23 million for the AI Economics Institute and a new NCSC AI Cyber Security Centre of Excellence in Manchester.
The investment is also intended to reduce the UK’s dependence on other countries, strengthen its security and resilience, and support homegrown businesses and talent, while boosting the economy and speeding up public services.
Industry reactions:
Stuart Harvey, CEO of Datactics, commented: “Government and the private sector continue to pour huge sums into AI, but the UK relies so heavily on frontier labs despite having almost no visibility into the data their models are trained on or where that data is stored. Labs like Anthropic and OpenAI won’t open up voluntarily, so the UK should consider making transparency a condition of operating here. The Government’s biosecurity partnerships with these labs in the Budget should set that expectation.”
“While the Budget’s AI package is a big boost for the UK’s AI ambitions, the reality is that most organisations aren’t ready to deploy AI at scale. Every week we’re seeing major security incidents involving AI, and often the root cause is data and access. That becomes particularly challenging as AI filters into public services such as the NHS, where the stakes are higher. Alongside AI investment, it’s vital that the data behind AI is held to the same standard as the AI itself and is properly governed so sensitive data remains protected.”
Campbell Cowie, Head of Policy, Standards & Regulation, iProov, commented: “Barely a week passes without another major cyber threat making headlines, and strengthening Britain’s defences must be viewed as a key economic priority. From critical software vulnerabilities to attacks bringing some of the country’s biggest businesses to a standstill, the cost to our economy is severe, with consequences extending far beyond the organisations targeted to include stalling growth, disrupting supply chains, undermining business confidence and putting jobs and investment at risk.
“Cybercriminals use many ways to break into an organisation, but perhaps the most concerning is also one of the simplest: convincing someone they’re a trusted employee, contractor or even a third-party organisation. As AI makes impersonation more convincing, cheaper and easier to scale, the ability to distinguish legitimate users from criminals is becoming a critical line of defence to protect national productivity and economic output.”
“The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill presents an important opportunity to build on the Government’s commitment and strengthen protections across critical national infrastructure and its supply chains. Patching technical vulnerabilities is vital, but so is closing the gaps that allow criminals to exploit human trust. Even something as routine as a password reset can become a gateway for criminals to infiltrate an organisation, with potentially devastating consequences that can ripple into the economy far beyond the organisation itself.”
John Lucey, VP EMEA North at Cellebrite, commented: “The investment for the AI Security Institute in the Budget will help to test powerful AI models, but there’s still no clear regulation for what happens when an autonomous system crosses a line that nobody anticipated. That is the big gap in the Budget and current UK AI policy.”
“In highly sensitive industries such as policing and digital forensics, there’s no room for AI to make a mistake when justice and people’s lives are at stake. Forces can’t move at the same pace as frontier labs and require clear safeguards to ensure AI is accurate and only draws on evidence that it is given, without open internet access. Every output has to have a clear source and be defensible, with human oversight, if it is to be used in court or to inform decisions on a case. As UK AI investment and regulation develop, they need to consider high-stakes applications such as policing rather than just focusing on frontier models.”
Simon Edwards, CEO of SE Labs, commented: “Cyber security poverty should be a priority for the government to tackle, amid a rapidly escalating cyber threat landscape. The prime issue is that SMEs lack the financial budgets to build strong cyber security capabilities, despite being the backbone of larger organisations’ supply chains.”
“Market-leading cyber security products are often not accessible to smaller businesses. As a result, SMEs are left to rely on alternative and less capable security tools. These leave them highly exposed to evolving cyber threats.”
The UK cannot afford to ignore this issue, so the government should offer SMEs financial assistance to invest in cyber security technology. Equally, larger organisations should be incentivised to protect their suppliers and encouraged to fund the acquisition of cyber security tools to support the smaller businesses in their supply chain.”
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