Overview

• Chancellor Rachel Reeves reversed last summer’s cancellation to reinstate government support for an Edinburgh-based supercomputer project.
• Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged an additional £1 billion to scale public AI computing capacity twentyfold over five years.
• The new system will be hosted at the University of Edinburgh’s Advanced Computing Facility and is expected to replace ARCHER2 by early 2027.
• It will form the core of the UK AI Research Resource, a national network set to expand twentyfold by 2030 to support research in personalized medicine and climate modeling.
• Specific technical specifications are due in the government’s Compute Roadmap this summer, with major technology firms invited to bid to build the platform.