With a new government having taken their seats in the House of Commons, a wave of tech policy changes are on the cards.
Labour ministers in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) have already signalled their intention to hit the ground running, with a flurry of new announcements.
This week, DSIT said it would designate British data centres as ‘critical national infrastructure’ in a bid to attract new investment, while the tech sector was rattled last month after the government shelved as much as £1.3bn of funding promised by the previous administration to support tech and AI projects.
It seems a more urgent time than ever, therefore, to have the ear of government officials. And some of the biggest tech firms on the planet, from Google and Meta to Tencent and OpenAI, have been meeting with senior DSIT staffers to put their case on how to shape policy on matters from AI to payments regulation.
UKTN trawled through departmental data on staff external meetings between January to March, the most recent timeframe for which records are available, to find out who has been wining and dining DSIT.
Among the more notable encounters we found DSIT had had dinner with Scale AI, the $14 billion California-based tech firm which has a major partnership with the US Department of Defense; dinner with London-based investment firm Deep Science Ventures; and lunch with US computing firm IBM.
DSIT met with a number of Big Tech businesses on several occasions to hold a “discussion on government digital and technology policy priorities.” They include Microsoft, Meta, Nokia, Google and OpenAI.
DSIT also met with Cambridge computing firm Riverlane to “discuss the UK’s options around purchasing a Quantum Computer”, and held a “venture capital discussion” with billionaire Marc Andreessen’s VC firm, a16z. Officials also met with Chinese tech giant Tencent “to discuss upcoming AI priorities.”
Most intriguingly, DSIT held meetings with cigarette and vape giant British American Tobacco for a “discussion of…success stories, learnings [and] experiences.”
With Labour party conference just days away, more tech policy changes look to be high up on the agenda. For those looking to influence policymaking, now might be an opportune time to get a date in the diary.
