US groups includ­ing Microsoft, Nvidia, Google and OpenAI have pledged to invest bil­lions of pounds in the UK, as Sir Keir Starmer hailed a tech alli­ance with Don­ald Trump before he landed in the UK for his state visit last night.

The largest com­mit­ment is from Microsoft, which plans to invest $30bn in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in the four years to 2028, about half of which will go towards cloud and AI infra­struc­ture in Bri­tain. That includes back­ing con­struc­tion of the UK’s largest super­com­puter with 23,000 AI chips, agree­ing a long-term leas­ing con­tract with Lon­don-based data centre com­pany Nscale.

Starmer said yes­ter­day that the tech deal with Trump marked a “decis­ive step towards the UK becom­ing a world leader in AI”.

UK offi­cials have likened increased Lon­don-Wash­ing­ton co-oper­a­tion in areas such as AI, quantum com­put­ing and nuc­lear energy as the start of a new “spe­cial rela­tion­ship”, akin to tra­di­tional ties in defence and secur­ity.