Google is significantly expanding its investments in the U.K., focusing on the growth of its artificial intelligence business. At a Monday morning event in London, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian unveiled several strategic initiatives in tandem with customers BT and WPP.
Expanding Data Residency for Enhanced Security
A key aspect of Google’s U.K. strategy involves broadening its data residency options, including Agentspace. This move allows enterprise clients building AI agents on Google infrastructure to host them locally, a critical factor for organizations concerned about data security and control.
To further encourage AI development within the U.K., Google is introducing financial incentives for startups. The new U.K. accelerator program will offer up to £280,000 in Google Cloud credits, along with expanded AI skills training. During the event held at its DeepMind offices, Google also announced the availability of Chirp 3, its audio generation model developed in-house, on its Vertex AI developer platform.
Agentspace: The Future of Enterprise AI
The company made clear that “agentic” is a buzzword for enterprise adoption of AI. Google is pitching the idea of AI agents designed to boost workplace productivity and enhance customer interactions. Agentspace is central to this vision, serving as Google’s platform for creating these intelligent assistants. Notable features within Agentspace include NotebookLM for enterprises, which can summarise large volumes of information, and support for multimodal search and generative AI agent creation.
Google launched Agentspace in beta in December 2024. This announcement builds upon Google’s October 2024 announcement of data residency in the U.K., providing private and public organizations with local options for secure data storage, AI training, and Gemini 1.5 Flash inference. The strategic objective is to attract more businesses to Google’s AI services, reducing reliance on competitors and addressing concerns regarding proprietary data handling.
Data remains a precious commodity, and Google’s emphasis on data residency reflects growing concerns. “We know from our research that a significant percentage of organizations across Europe are still very nervous about using AI in the public cloud,” said IDC analyst Mick Heys. Many organizations prefer dedicated infrastructure or co-location environments with greater control over data management. “They will have full control to keep the data where they need it,” Kurian stated at the event.
Collaboration and Early Adoption
BT and WPP, both longtime partners in AI services, were featured at the event. These companies have established development and data partnerships with Google Cloud and are early adopters of pilot programs, encompassing new versions of Imagen, Veo, and Gemini. “We are quietly reinventing all our operations,” stated BT CEO Allison Kirby about how AI will impact them. The aim is to improve customer service through enhanced phone scam detection and improved customer agents.
In 2023, BT announced plans to cut up to 55,000 jobs, with AI expected to fill one-third of those roles.
Broader AI Developments
Google is currently seeing a period of rapid AI development, including the recent launch of several new Gemini features, particularly Gemini 2.0. This new generation of tools now features multimodal capabilities, allowing for real-time image generation through word prompts, a new robotics model, and advancements in the lightweight Gemma model.
Government Support for AI Development
The U.K. government is also actively promoting AI development, both within the public sector and across the broader industry. Simultaneously, European businesses are striving to decrease reliance on Big Tech in favor of homegrown solutions. The U.K. government plans to demonstrate its adoption of generative AI services in its operations, aiming to streamline workflows and facilitate data-driven decision-making.
The government’s support for AI is part of a broader strategy, aiming to capitalize on the projected economic benefits of AI. The U.K. is committed to establishing AI regional zones that will offer data center capacity and regulatory updates to create a better environment for data management.
In response to questions about the U.K.’s approach to AI regulations, Hassabis said, “These models are global and used everywhere, and we need to set an international standard for this.” The U.K. is considering potential changes to how AI companies leverage intellectual property for model training — a topic of ongoing debate. Interestingly, the U.K. government has cited OpenAI and Anthropic, which are rival companies to Google, as key partners. Google’s recent announcements could initiate more collaborative ventures with the government.
