The UK government has announced plans to invest £36 million ($49m) to boost the supercomputing capacity at the AI Research Resource (AIRR) in Cambridge sixfold by spring 2026.

The investment will be used to fund a new supercomputer at Cambridge, in addition to deploying AMD MI355X accelerators within the existing Dawn system, housed at the University of Cambridge’s West Cambridge campus.

The AIRR was established in 2023 and thus far has seen two new supercomputers developed: the University of Bristol’s Isambard-AI, which contains 5,448 Nvidia GH200 superchips and offers 21 exaflops of AI compute, and the Intel-powered, 19 petaflops Dawn, which the former links up with.

The newly announced funding forms part of the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, launched in January 2025 to help drive AI adoption across the UK. Consisting of 50 recommendations split across three pillars, the plan includes a pledge from the government to invest more than £2 billion ($2.4bn) to support “sufficient, secure, and sustainable AI infrastructure” – £1 billion ($1.4bn) to expand AIRR at least twentyfold by 2030, and up to £750 million ($1bn) for a new national supercomputer in Edinburgh.

The current Labour government previously canceled plans for an exascale system in the Scottish capital, before reversing its decision in January 2025. No official confirmation has been given about whether the Edinburgh supercomputer announced by the Labour government will still be an exascale system.

A report published by the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in July 2025 said that the country needs to deploy “at least” 6GW of AI-capable data center capacity by 2030 to remain competitive.

“The UK is home to world-class AI talent, but too often our ambitious researchers and most promising start-ups have been held back by a lack of access to the computing power they need,” said Minister for AI Kanishka Narayan. “This investment changes that – giving British innovators the tools to compete with the biggest players and develop AI that improves lives, from spotting diseases earlier to helping communities prepare for extreme weather, right across the country.”

Stephanie Dismore, senior vice president EMEA, AMD, added: “At AMD, we are proud to support Cambridge University with the high-performance computing technologies that enable groundbreaking AI research. By combining the power of AMD Epyc processors and AMD Instinct accelerators, we’re helping researchers accelerate scientific discoveries.”