By Christian May

Copyright cityam

£150bn of investment has been pledged by US giants, itching to pour their money into the UK – including more than £30bn to turbocharge our artificial intelligence base.

The choreography was masterful, and I don’t just mean the military and Royal welcome dolled out to the Trumps and their entourage, although it was pretty spectacular.

Along with the raw politics of a state visit came a steady stream of announcements of billions upon billions of pounds worth of investment into a whole range of sectors, so let me say hats off to the diplomatic and political teams in Downing St and our bruised embassy in Washington for pulling this off.

It takes a lot to confirm and coordinate the kind of announcements we’ve seen and it is a genuine coup for this government that they’ve managed it, not least when you consider how distracted they’ve been in recent weeks.

Trump came to the UK with a plane load of business leaders in tow; although to be fair many of them probably flew in their own jets, and they have not disappointed.

First out of the blocks was news of the new Atlantic Partnership for Advanced Nuclear Energy, designed to make it quicker for companies to build new nuclear power stations in both the UK and the US. The deal comes with a commitment for advanced manufacturing in the UK in places like Hartlepool where advanced modular reactors will be built, heralding a new age of nuclear tech.

Then came news of the US-UK Tech Prosperity Deal, which saw the likes of Google, Salesforce and Microsoft announce major investment in the UK. Microsoft alone announced £20bn of investment into the UK’s AI infrastructure alongside other announcements from Google on new data centres, research centres and AI innovation.

The PM has been needing some good news

Then last night the government added this all up and declared that £150bn worth of investment has been secured – with £80bn of that coming from private equity giant Blackstone which already has sprawling investments across UK real estate and infrastructure. The buyout firm announced in June it would spend £370bn across Europe over 10 years, and now we know how much of that is earmarked for the UK.

Starmer, who has needed some good news of late, said these deals were “a testament to Britain’s economic strength and a bold signal that our country is open, ambitious, and ready to lead”.

I think I’ll give him half of that; we are indeed open for business, one might even say desperate for business, but how is our economic strength?

Well, that depends where you look.

The pharmaceutical industry, for example, is heading for the door, warning that Britain just isn’t competitive enough. A billion pound lab project was pulled from London last week, with other pharma giants cancelling hundreds of millions of pounds in research and development.

We also know that global investors and fund managers are pulling out of UK listed equities at their fastest rate in two decades – hardly a vote of confidence in our economic fundamentals. Meanwhile retailers and big employers are getting hoarse sounding the alarm about the state of the UK, with retail giant Next warning today that the UK faces years of anaemic growth. These are major problems and they have been well discussed on this show.

But, when it comes to AI and advanced technology, clearly we are doing something right.

The UK poised to be ‘AI superpower’

Nvidia, arguably the most important business in the world right now – the firm behind the chips that make AI work – says the UK is in a sweet spot and poised to become an AI superpower. One reason for this is that we’re not in the EU, so we can go our own way on AI regulation.

Another reason is that we do have great foundations; world-leading universities, amazing start-ups, an economy geared towards AI’s potential and a supportive government. What’s been missing is the infrastructure – the mass of data centres and energy infrastructure needed to power AI and, we’re told, unlock its full potential.

But critics have questioned whether the massive shopping spree announced by US tech giants will leave the UK as not much more than a customer of these firms.

Ministers and the various tech leaders have been at pains to stress that this is a partnership; the money is flowing into existing UK tech companies in AI and quantum computing, firms which will be “right at the heart” of the coming AI boom.

Potentially transformative deals

Time will tell whether that’s the case or not, but it does feel as if we’re somewhat at the mercy of America’s tech juggernauts and America’s private equity big beasts. Some people will feel a little uncomfortable with this and much will depend on how UK firms grow into the new spaces being opened up, including in the UK’s public markets where we could do with some tech giants of our own.

For now, I’m prepared to give all this the benefit of the doubt; we are talking about potentially transformative sums of money in potentially transformative parts of the economy.

I’d go as far to say that – from a business perspective – this has been Starmer’s best week, and Britain’s best week since Starmer took over. Long may it continue.