DSIT

DSIT is the UK's most active industrial policy actor in spring 2026. On 16 April the department named seven companies in the Sovereign AI Unit's first cohort: Callosum received direct equity investment, while Prima Mente, Cosine, Cursive, Doubleword, Twig Bio, and Odyssey each received up to one million GPU hours via the AIRR compute network. Days earlier, on 14 April, DSIT's Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund allocated over £80m to four regional manufacturing sites — Accord Healthcare in Barnstaple, the University of Birmingham's Precision Health Technologies Accelerator, Codis in Haverhill, and Norgine in Hengoed. In May 2026, DSIT committed £16m (with UKRI's £20m) to expand Cambridge's DAWN supercomputer sixfold using AMD MI355X accelerators, with the successor system Zenith due in spring 2027. On 18 May, Secretary of State Liz Kendall launched the AI and Future of Work Unit — a cross-government body spanning DSIT, DWP, DfE, BEIS, and HM Treasury, targeting 10 million people upskilled in AI by 2030, with 2 million inside SMEs. The SAIU's Strategic Assets Grants Programme published open eligibility criteria with a 5 June 2026 deadline, running alongside a parallel ARIA £100m Scaling Compute programme.

DSIT was created in February 2023 from a split of the former Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It is responsible for Science funding through UK Research and Innovation, broadband and telecoms regulation, and the UK's AI and technology strategy, including the AI Security Institute. The department also oversees the UK's relationship with the DMCC Act, the domestic equivalent of the EU's Digital Markets Act. The original Sovereign AI Unit — a £500m commitment launched in 2025 with James Wise as chair — preceded the first cohort announcement and provided the programme's investment envelope.

The Sovereign AI Unit placed DSIT in direct tension with the EU's AI governance framework. Where Brussels is pursuing regulatory clarity and penalties for non-compliance, DSIT's approach emphasises investment-led competitiveness and lighter-touch domestic regulation. The AI and Future of Work Unit extends that mandate into social policy: for the first time, DSIT formally co-ordinates with DWP and DfE on labour-market adaptation, not just technology supply. Critics noted that £500m is a fraction of the EU's €43bn Chips Act commitment, though DSIT officials argued the UK's strength lies in AI model research rather than semiconductor manufacturing.