James Wise, chair of the UK's £500 million Sovereign AI Fund, urged the government to adopt an investor mindset toward domestic AI startups rather than treating policy as solely a regulatory exercise.
He said Britain often "failed to deliver the sort of contracts that helped kick‑start US giants such as SpaceX and Palantir," arguing public procurement and early state buying can create valuable companies, he said in an interview.
US takes more proactive approach
"We should be thinking like investors," Wise added, saying innovation in US government procurement had helped make them "very valuable companies."
The call dovetails with a 2026 shift in UK policy that pairs direct public capital with non-cash support for scale-ups: the sovereign fund sits alongside schemes for compute access, fast‑track visas and a procurement stream designed to act as a first customer, and government plans that can include equity rounds of meaningful size for winners.
Wise chairs the fund while remaining a partner at Balderton Capital, and his intervention frames the immediate policy debate: whether Britain will convert recent financing and compute pledges into the repeatable, investor‑style deals that founders say they need.
