Is the Thames Valley ready for the future of AI?

The Thames Valley is home to dozens of AI and data centre companies

Earlier this month Donald Trump and Sir Keir Starmer announced a deal they said would bring £150 billion of investment into the country, billing it as a new tech prosperity deal.

Much of the money will go to the Artifical Intelligence (AI), computing and data centre sectors, areas the Thames Valley specialises in.

Slough alone is home to more than thirty data centres.

While it's too early to say just how much of this £150 billion tech deal funding will head Thames Valley's way, experts say the region should be at the front of the queue when the money is dished out.

Data centres sit at the very heart of our modern day lives.

Andrew Pilsworth is the Managing Director for Data Centres and Strategic Partnerships at SEGRO, the company which runs Slough Trading Estate, one of Europe's biggest: "Everything we do online in our digital life will at some point have gone through a data centre so they are an absolutely critical part of the digital economy that the government is keen to grow.

"That growth is great for the whole community in Slough. Data centres create employment opportunities both in construction and then really high quality high value added jobs for people like mechanical and software engineers, once they're up and running."

It will be months if not years before we know exactly where the £150 billion of investment the UK government says it's secured from the US will go.

One thing we do know though is that that the biggest single investment comes from Microsoft which has its UK Headquarters in Reading. It's announced a £22 billion spending package - its largest ever outside the US.

Chief executive Satya Nadella says he expects investment in AI to drive UK growth and productivity: "We've been in the UK since 1982, it's forty plus years now and we've consistently over all of these decades invested in the UK to bring the best technologies here so that we can then have customers across the United Kingdom".

There's no doubt the Thames Valley is a big draw for companies in sectors like AI and computing.

The economic data company The Data City says that while the region is home to just 1.6% of all companies in the UK, four per cent of companies which specialise in artificial intelligence call the Thames Valley home.

Chief Economist Paul Swinney says: "If you're a cutting edge company you need the workers, high skilled workers and you can get them in spades in the area. Location is important too and I'm sure that proximity to Heathrow and London is having an effect as well".

Paul Swinney, Chief Economist at The Data City says the Thames Valley acts as a magnet for companies involved in technologies like AI

He says the fast developing world of Artificial Intelligence and other emerging technologies doesn't come without its challenges though and that the region and its workforce needs to be nimble: "Ten years ago it would have been smart phone app development, today it's AI.

"In ten years time who knows what it's going to be? The key thing for a place like Reading and the wider Thames Valley is how do you make yourself continually attractive to those new industries when they come about".