The Rest Is Money 270. AI minister: How we build a trillion dollar AI company
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Apr 15, 2026 
Kanishka Narayan, the UK’s Minister for Artificial Intelligence and Online Safety, leads AI policy and the sovereign AI fund. He discusses the £500m sovereign AI fund, plans to anchor and scale homegrown AI firms, balancing public and private finance, and national strategies on skills, safety, compute and catastrophic-risk preparedness.
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David Silver Example Shows UK Founders Attract US Capital
- Kanishka cites David Silver, ex-DeepMind AlphaGo leader, launching Ineffable Thinking and raising multibillion valuations with US lead investors.
- He accepts foreign capital can be fine so long as the UK offers support to keep companies based domestically.
Run The Fund Like A Top Tier Venture Firm
- Design the fund to feel and operate like a private venture firm to attract top founders and investors.
- Combine venture-style pace and culture with government tools like procurement and visa support for founders.
Expectation Is To Tax Compute Not Human Labour
- The government expects major labour shifts and plans to tax compute rather than human labour as AI adoption grows.
- An expanded AI economics institute and future work unit will monitor labour signals and model long-term scenarios.