Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is planning to spend up to £100 million on chip procurement amid the global race for artificial intelligence (AI) computing power, according to new reports.

The UK Government has reportedly been in conversation with Nvidia, Intel, and AMD about procuring high-powered chips for the development of AI technologies through a national “AI Research Resource.”

First revealed by the Telegraph, the effort is allegedly being driven by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The Telegraph stated that it’s believed that the UK Government is in the advanced stages of an up to 5,000 graphics processing unit (GPU) order from Nvidia.

GPUs from the likes of Nvidia power artificial intelligence, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot — which has sparked the explosive interest in and usage of generative artificial intelligence technologies recently.

A spokeperson for the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology told DIGIT: “We are committed to supporting a thriving compute environment which maintains the UK’s position as a leader across science, innovation and technology.

“The funding for the AI Research Resource is part of our £900 million compute investment, as announced in the Spring Budget and which will be delivered by UKRI.

“No decisions have been taken on who will provide hardware for the Resource, and further announcements will follow in due course.”

The reports of the £100m chip procurement follow March’s independent review into the UK’s AI computing capabilities, which criticised the deficiency of compute power in the country.

“The UK has great talent in AI with a vibrant start-up ecosystem, but public investment in AI compute is seriously lagging,” the report read. It also noted that “there are significant shortages in public accelerator capacity in the UK, with fewer than 1,000 NVIDIA A100 GPUs available to researchers.”

It also mentioned that as of November 2022, the UK had only 1.3% share of the global compute capacity, and that, “Meanwhile, other countries continue to bolster their compute capabilities.”

A UK Government official seemingly briefed on the chip procurement plans reportedly told the Guardian that the £100m figure is far too low compared to investment from the likes of the EU, US, and China.

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Relatedly, earlier this year, the UK Government unveiled its £1 billion semiconductor investment strategy, made in a bid to help improve and accelerate the domestic chip sector.

The US and EU have pledged roughly $50bn (£40bn) and €43bn (£37bn) respectively to semiconductor — or chip — funding to build up their domestic industry.

However, the £1bn investment was also seen as too low by experts when contrasted with investments from international peers, with Labour shadow culture minister Lucy Powell saying that the plan showed “​​significantly less ambition than our competitors.”