Huge figures are being touted around for the growth in this market with startups sprouting prolifically and getting snapped up by big chip companies wanting expertise in the tech and a quick route to market.
The UK shouldn’t miss out on this and I have held online forums with some of the university photonics players – Southampton. Cambridge, Aston, Loughborough, Sheffield and Bath – and some encouraging startups have emerged.
Now these fledglings have to be exposed to the outside world to find major funding, customers and partners and this is where I come in.
I have identified locations where strategic technical meetings and conferences take place and have arranged for HMG to fund a trip for myself and a few of our start-up execs to Las Vegas, San Francisco, Barcelona, Paris, Dubai, Bali, Singapore, and Hawaii.
When one of my ministerial colleagues suggested this looked more like a jolly-up than a business trip, I told him that the tech world likes exotic locations and it was necessary to meet customers, collaborators, investors , journalists and influencers to build relationships, stoke interest and generate buzz. As, out of all 21 cabinet ministers, I’m the only one to have had any experience in industry, they find it difficult to argue with me.
HM’s ambassadors and consuls in these locations will be gee-ed up to lay on receptions, cocktail parties and dinners to attract the local technological and financial glitterati to come and talk business.
In the meantime we are working on all the paraphernalia of white papers, blog posts, case studies, and videos for each startup to explain their technologies in straightforward and comprehensible ways.
We have social media gurus pushing our patter on platforms like LinkedIn, X, Instagram and Twitter.
We are grooming our CEOs to think like thought leaders, speak like oracles and act like techie Sun Tzus.
As the de facto leader of this merry band, the programme will offer personal networking opportunities for myself plus an insight into which of these startups I can most profitably invest my cash.
Why shouldn’t I get my share of this AI datacentre bonanza?
