Microsoft says its new $30bn (£22bn) investment in the UK's AI sector - its largest outside of the US - should significantly boost Britain's economy in the next few years, BBC reports.
The package forms a major part of a £31bn agreement dubbed the "Tech Prosperity Deal", signed between the UK government and several US tech giants as part of Donald Trump's second state visit to the UK.
The deal will see Google, Nvidia and others invest in British-based infrastructure to support AI tech, largely in the form of data centres. Microsoft will also now be involved in the creation of a powerful new supercomputer in Essex.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the BBC of the tech's potential impact on economic growth.
"It may happen faster, so our hope is not 10 years but maybe five," he said.
"Whenever anyone gets excited about AI, I want to see it ultimately in the economic growth and the GDP growth."
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the US-UK deal marked "a generational step change in our relationship with the US".
He added that the agreement was "creating highly skilled jobs, putting more money in people's pockets and ensuring this partnership benefits every corner of the United Kingdom".
The UK economy has remained stubbornly sluggish in recent months.
Nadella compared the economic benefits of the meteoric rise of AI with the impact of the personal computer when it became common in the workplace, about ten years after it first started scaling in the 1990s.
But there are also growing mutterings that AI is a very lucrative bubble that is about to burst.
Nadella conceded that "all tech things are about booms and busts and bubbles" and warned that AI should not be over-hyped or under-hyped but also said the newborn tech would still bring about new products, new systems and new infrastructure.
He acknowledged that its energy consumption remains "very high" but argued that its potential benefits, especially in the fields of healthcare, public services, and business productivity, were worthwhile. He added that investing in data centres was "effectively" also investing in modernising the power grid but did not say that money would be shared directly with the UK's power supplier, the National Grid.
The campaign group Foxglove has warned that the UK could end up "footing the bill for the colossal amounts of power the giants need".
The supercomputer, to be built in Loughton, Essex, was already announced by the government in January, but Microsoft has now come on board to the project.
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