Andy Burnham’s premiership has only just begun, but already artificial intelligence has been handed its highest-ever seat in British government.
Kanishka Narayan, promoted from a junior AI and online safety brief to full cabinet attendance as the new Minister for AI, is now in the room where the big calls will be made.
Alongside this, DSIT has been folded into a new Business, Innovation, Science and Trade department – a big structural change and one that’s split opinion.
However, rather than getting caught up in the details about the machinery of government, we’re more interested in what it could mean if it works: a government with AI at the centre of its thinking, rather than three rungs down an org chart.
There’s a philosophical shift here too.
Burnham’s team is reportedly rethinking the previous government’s approach, with more emphasis on British ownership, sovereignty and bringing workers along with the technology, rather than around it.
We like the sound of that.
Sovereignty and ownership are exactly the right ambitions for a country that’s already third in the world for AI investment, with only the US and China ahead of us.
The opportunity now is to turn that ambition into delivery, and we’re genuinely excited to see how this unfolds.
Here’s what we’ll be watching for:
1. Turning ambition into capital
The AI Opportunities Action Plan has set a strong direction alongside the £500m Sovereign AI Fund, which was established to support the next generation of British unicorns.
Unusually for the government, the brief is to invest high-risk scale-ups offering high potential rewards that will ultimately move the dial for the UK and globally in AI.
A cabinet-level brief should be able to go further still to facilitate faster procurement and louder, more consistent backing for schemes such as SEIS and EIS that genuinely move the needle on early-stage investment.
If the new set-up can accelerate that, it’ll be worth every column inch spent debating the reshuffle.
2. Backing home-grown businesses, not just big-name ones
Britain doesn’t lack AI talent – the challenge has always been creating the conditions to scale it here before it’s bought or drawn abroad.
Too often, a British team builds something world-class, reaches Series A or B, and then sells to a US acquirer or relocates to chase growth capital that’s more available elsewhere. A serious push on sovereignty could be just the factor that closes that gap.
We’d love the real measure of this strategy to be how many British AI companies reach Series A and beyond – remaining British-owned and still growing from here.
What business wants from politicians: truth, stability and support
3. Putting Britain on the main stage
Capital needs a reason to look here, not just incentives once it arrives. Some of the best work happening right now isn’t in Whitehall; it’s on stages and in boardrooms overseas, putting British AI companies directly in front of investors who would otherwise default to Silicon Valley or Shenzhen.
We do this ourselves at EHE, bringing US investors over to meet the founders we back and see the ecosystem first-hand – and we’d love to see government showcasing Britain just as loudly on the biggest international stages.
4. Reaching beyond the M25
The strongest growth in early-stage investment last year came from outside London. As the former Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham knows this territory better than most.
We met Narayan a few months ago during UK Tech Week in Manchester, when he spent time with founders on the Bruntwood Female Founder programme while we were running an AI session.
He was receptive and took feedback seriously. If that instinct and Burnham’s own regional roots shape this strategy, that’s a genuinely promising sign.
This is also why we back native-AI founders across the UK, drawn to sectors such as applied AI in enterprise software, health, industrial technology and robotics, where genuinely useful models are solving real operational problems, often outside London and outside the headlines.
The new government has raised the stakes for AI. We’re optimistic about what that could mean, alongside the positive impact No 10 North could have, and we’ll be watching with real interest as the strategy takes shape on the ground.