London remains the number-one tech city outside of the US, based on Dealroom’s analysis that used a combination of factors including funding, patents, and billion-dollar-plus exits.
The breadth of the activity can be noted during London Tech Week, an annual five-day event that brings together international enterprise leaders, government officials and a dynamic expo to thousands of attendees.
During the 2024 edition, held in London Olympia in June, the hype around artificial intelligence (AI) in the UK’s capital could be heard loud and clear.
In a strategically timely move, Salesforce unveiled the opening of its first dedicated AI Center on the eve of London Tech Week, coinciding with the company’s own London World Tour.
Salesforce’s new AI Center will see a 40,000-square-foot facility opened up in the Blue Fin Building, an iconic landmark based on the south bank of the River Thames in Southwark, and will host a range of AI training and up-skilling programs while also building important connections between tech companies, specialists and Salesforce partners.
But why did Salesforce opt for London, and was this decision a smart move?
A vote of confidence for London
Although Salesforce looks likely to open more AI Centers in key international locations in the future, its decision to opt for London as the first host city for this major endeavor speaks volumes for the potential of the city.
Further, it looks like Salesforce isn’t the only tech firm that views London in a positive light with AI development. Research by London & Partners, one of the driving forces behind London Tech Week, found that some 77% of decision-makers at major international AI firms consider the city to be “more supportive of AI development than other major AI hubs,” according to Managing Director Janet Coyle.
It’s also interesting to note that the AI Center isn’t the first play that Salesforce has made here.
The company has committed $4 billion to invest in AI innovation over the next five years under Salesforce Ventures.
To date, $200 million has already been awarded to UK AI firms including Eleven Labs, a provider of an AI-powered text-to-speech and voice generator, and the procurement platform AutoGen AI to name a couple of examples.
The presence of the Salesforce Ventures fund coupled with the AI center shows a clear vote of confidence for London’s future in AI, but its success is likely to hinge on the wider tech ecosystem in the capital.
The rise of AI centers in Europe
However, it seems that London will be one of many cities hosting dedicated AI centers soon.
For instance, Microsoft plans to invest $3.2 billion in AI facilities in Sweden, its largest-ever infrastructure bet in the Nordic country. The enterprise Data4 also announced this month plans to develop an AI center outside of Athens, signaling a boost to Greece’s digital infrastructure and economy.
To understand more about the benefits of AI centers we spoke to Ranjit Tinaikar, CEO of Ness Digital Engineering (Ness), which earlier this year launched an innovation center in Europe.
Speaking on the growth of AI centers globally and the opening of Salesforce’s inaugural AI Center in London, Tinaikar explained, “I think AI Centers are a very valid idea. And I completely understand the goals of becoming the R&D hub for driving AI innovation.” At the same time, he stressed the importance of the ecosystem’s foundation for determining the success of such programs.
“If you were to compare Boston, which used to be the tech center for America in the sixties and seventies, before being supplanted by Silicon Valley as a tech hub; why did that revolution happen? It required four things: First, it needed an institution like Stanford, which was truly interested in primary research. Primary research, not commercial. Second, it needed the VC and the capital markets around it to fund those ideas and commercialize it by working with the universities. Third, you can’t do that unless you have a local talent pool that actually sits in that ecosystem and takes those ideas to market. Fourth, you need government support to allow people to take risks.”
However, the executive cautioned, “If you don’t have purely research-oriented, high-end research institutions, a talent hub, and a capital market that actually funds it, then in the long term it’s not sustainable.”
With this feedback in mind, it seems that the AI landscape in the UK is on solid footing. For example, the aforementioned developer training courses that Salesforce is now offering through its new London-based AI Center have the backing of City Hall, with the Deputy Mayor of London for Business and Growth, Howard Dawber, present at the opening ceremony.
Meanwhile, the city has a wealth of internationally competitive research universities such as University College London, the London School of Economics and King’s College London, all of which further the progress of foundational data science research and collaborate with national programs such as the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and AI, founded in 2015 and largely funded by the UK government.
The Alan Turing Institute is based in London’s ‘Knowledge Quarter’, a focal point around the King’s Cross area of London that houses other national institutes such as the Francis Crick Institute in addition to major tech firms like Google, who chose the site for its UK headquarters.
This critical mass of educational institutions, national programs, high levels of investment and the presence of major tech enterprises all point towards a solid future for AI in London and the UK.
Where next for AI centers?
While it’s still too soon to see how much of an impact the AI centers discussed above will bring, their presence alone suggests a bright future. Whether it’s Salesforce in London or Microsoft in Sweden, such sizable investments to open such ambitious AI operations will be made after careful consideration. The fact that these locations have been chosen to host an AI center means they already boast the requisite parts of the AI ecosystem required.
The British are famous for innovating around inefficiencies, which suggests that the new center will be able to navigate around any future hurdles that arise.