Where should they build their global headquarters?
The answer matters because it tells us something bigger than where a company opens an office. It tells us whether Britain remains a country that attracts global ambition. The encouraging reality is that the UK starts from a position of strength. I will be hosting a panel at Olympia for these companies.
Britain is not trying to become an AI power. It already is one. The UK remains the world’s third-largest AI market after the United States and China. The sector is worth more than £21 billion and is projected to exceed £1 trillion by 2035.
More importantly, Britain’s advantage is not just capital. It is intellectual infrastructure.
Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, UCL, Edinburgh and many others continue to produce world-class AI research and talent. Britain gave the world Alan Turing. Today it remains home to institutions such as the Alan Turing Institute and the AI Security Institute, both central to the global conversation around artificial intelligence.
The UK’s AI ecosystem is not theoretical. It is commercial. AI companies raised around £2.9 billion in investment in 2024, above previous records, while AI-related inward investment projects exceeded £15 billion and were expected to create more than 6,500 jobs.
Government policy increasingly reflects this ambition. The UK’s AI Opportunities Action Plan explicitly aims to position Britain as a leading AI nation by attracting the world’s best entrepreneurs, researchers and investors.
This is where the Office for Investment becomes strategically important.
Its role is not simply to attract money. It is to attract ecosystems. Talent. Headquarters. Decision-making. Long-term commitment.
Countries do not become technology superpowers because companies sell into their markets. They become technology superpowers because companies choose to build there.
That is the opportunity with India.
India is producing a generation of AI companies that are global from birth. They operate at scale, move fast, and increasingly think beyond national borders. Many will need access to international capital, trusted legal systems, sophisticated financial markets, world-class universities and global customers.
Few countries offer that combination as effectively as Britain.
The UK sits between Asia and North America. It combines deep capital markets with regulatory credibility. English remains the language of global commerce. Its universities continue to attract elite talent from around the world.
The competition is real. Dubai offers low taxes. Singapore offers efficiency. America offers scale.
But Britain offers something different. It offers a place where global companies can become global institutions.
If even a fraction of the Indian AI firms arriving this week choose to build their global headquarters in Britain, create jobs here, pay taxes here and scale globally from here, it will reveal something important.
Not that Britain is living off its past. But that it remains one of the few places in the world where the future still wants to arrive.
Alpesh B Patel OBE
Dealmaker, Global Entrepreneur Programme, Office for Investment, Dept for Business, UK Govt.