Google is making a stronger push into the UK’s artificial intelligence sector. On Monday morning in London, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian announced key updates alongside corporate partners BT and WPP.
One of the biggest changes is the expansion of UK data residency to include Agentspace. Businesses using Google’s AI infrastructure can now host AI agents within the UK, ensuring their data remains under local control. This is particularly important for companies concerned about data security and compliance.
More support for AI startups and training
Google is also increasing its support for AI startups in the UK. The company has introduced new financial incentives, offering up to £280,000 (US$354,000) in Google Cloud credits to startups that join its new UK accelerator programme. Additionally, Google is expanding its AI skills training initiatives, providing more opportunities for businesses and developers to upskill in artificial intelligence.
At the same event, Google revealed that Chirp 3, an advanced audio generation model developed at DeepMind, is now part of its Vertex AI developer platform. This addition is expected to enhance AI-driven audio applications.
Google’s AI strategy and industry response
The term “agentic AI” is now widely used to describe how businesses can integrate AI to improve efficiency and customer interactions. Agentspace is Google’s platform designed to develop AI-powered work assistants. A key feature of Agentspace is NotebookLM for enterprises, which processes large volumes of information and summarises key insights. The platform also includes multimodal search capabilities and generative AI tools to build AI agents tailored to business needs.
Agentspace launched as a beta version in December 2024. Google introduced UK data residency in October 2024, allowing public and private organisations to store data, train AI models, and run AI-powered operations locally. With this latest move, Agentspace is fully included in the UK data residency region.
The goal is to encourage more businesses to work with Google for AI solutions rather than turning to competitors. At the same time, Google addresses concerns about data security and privacy, which have been major barriers to AI adoption. As AI-driven services become more common, companies want greater control over their proprietary data.
“We know from our research that a significant percentage of organisations across Europe are still very nervous about using AI in the public cloud,” said Mick Heys, an analyst at IDC. “They want to deploy AI and experiment in the cloud, but for large-scale deployment, they prefer dedicated infrastructure that they can closely manage. This is largely due to data security, privacy, and sovereignty concerns.”
Kurian reassured businesses that Google’s AI solutions offer full control over data residency: “They will have full control to keep the data where they need it.”
UK’s AI push and Google’s rapid development
BT and WPP, who were present at the announcement, are long-time partners of Google Cloud and early adopters of AI technologies such as Imagen, Veo, and Gemini. BT CEO Allison Kirby highlighted how AI is transforming the company’s operations. “We are quietly reinventing all our operations,” she said. AI is already used to detect phone scams and improve customer service interactions. In 2023, BT announced it would cut 55,000 jobs, with one-third of those roles expected to be replaced by AI.
Google has been rapidly advancing its AI capabilities. Last week, it unveiled Gemini 2.0, which introduces real-time multimodal AI generation, robotics advancements, and improvements to the lightweight Gemma model.
Meanwhile, the UK government is actively promoting AI development within public services and the private sector. However, European businesses are also advocating for less reliance on major US tech companies, instead pushing for more locally developed AI solutions.
The UK government has outlined plans to encourage AI innovation while maintaining regulatory oversight, ensuring that businesses and consumers benefit from AI’s rapid advancements, and addressing concerns about data privacy and ethical AI use.
