Recently, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to invest £100 million to purchase thousands of high-performance artificial intelligence chips. This news has garnered significant attention from international media. It is understood that UK government officials have been engaging in in-depth discussions with global IT giants such as Nvidia, AMD, and Intel to procure the highest-quality chips for "national artificial intelligence research resources." This initiative is led by UK Research and Innovation, a scientific funding agency, and is currently in crucial negotiations with Nvidia. Reportedly, the UK plans to acquire 5,000 GPUs from Nvidia.
Insiders revealed that the £100 million funding has already been allocated, and UK officials are actively urging Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt to allocate more funds in the coming months to ensure the smooth progress of this procurement plan.
Prior to this, the Financial Times reported that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are actively participating in the global race for AI weaponry, purchasing thousands of high-performance Nvidia chips that are crucial for building AI software.
Insiders further revealed that Saudi Arabia has purchased at least 3,000 Nvidia H100 chips through the public research institution King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Meanwhile, the UAE has also obtained thousands of Nvidia chips and successfully developed its own open-source large-scale language model, Falcon, at the state-owned technology innovation institute in Abu Dhabi.
Driven by the wave of artificial intelligence, high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) have become highly sought after by various countries. It is widely believed in the industry that with the active procurement efforts of countries such as the UK, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, the demand for GPUs will continue to grow in the future.