Question to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce operating costs for domestic AI research businesses.

The Government is supporting UK AI research businesses to reduce their costs. The AI Research Resource provides eligible UK small and medium-sized enterprises and researchers with free specialist AI compute for research projects.

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, provides funding to enable businesses to undertake high-risk research and development and access compute, alongside shared datasets and evaluation assets that reduce duplication and data-development costs. Through the Catapult Network and wider ecosystem partners, businesses can also access specialist expertise, testing, assurance and real-world environments, which can reduce the cost of AI development and deployment and accelerate routes to market.