Every year, London Tech Week brings together ministers and industry leaders to set the direction for UK tech. And every year, we hear ambitious declarations about Britain becoming a global leader in AI, cloud, and next-generation infrastructure.

This year, the stakes feel different.

Recent trade negotiations have laid bare the frightening extent to which UK businesses depend on a small number of US tech giants. As AI continues its rapid ascent, the shifting transatlantic relationship has left IT leaders questioning just how much control we truly have over the technologies we rely on.

Against this backdrop, two key issues are rising to the top of the agenda. Sovereignty: the need to shape, govern, and control the digital foundations our economy runs on. And competitiveness: creating a market that gives UK businesses real choice, fair pricing, and the freedom to grow without being boxed in by monopolies.

If London Tech Week is about setting the agenda, then this is where the conversation needs to start.

Sovereignty as a foundation for long-term resilience

Sovereignty has moved out of the policy papers and into boardrooms. The question is no longer should we be thinking about it, but how quickly we can build it into our infrastructure strategies.

That doesn’t mean closing the door to global innovation. It means making sure UK businesses have real agency over where their data lives, who controls it, and which laws apply. As US political decisions continue to carry more weight on this side of the Atlantic, having infrastructure governed by UK law has become increasingly critical in discussions about long-term resilience.

The businesses I speak to essentially just want clarity, consistency, and control. These are things they increasingly can’t rely on when using hyperscalers headquartered thousands of miles away. Sovereignty gives them a foundation to plan long-term.

Yet the government’s investment strategy still feels out of step with what businesses on the ground actually need. Since July 2024, the UK has welcomed over £25 billion in data centre investment, but most of that funding has come from US tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft, alongside major financial players like Blackstone.

That kind of inward investment might boost physical infrastructure, but it doesn’t move the needle on sovereignty. It instead deepens our reliance on foreign platforms at a time when businesses are actively looking for more local control. If the UK government is serious about supporting a sovereign digital future, it needs to do more than talk about it. It must back UK-based cloud providers.

We can’t talk sovereignty without talking about competition

One thing that comes through consistently in conversations with clients is that businesses want a genuinely competitive cloud market. They want choice. They want to avoid lock-in. And they want to work with providers who treat them as partners, not captives.

Right now, that’s not the market we have.

With US firms now controlling over 80% of the European cloud market, it’s clear that a handful of hyperscalers hold disproportionate power. They set the terms on pricing, interoperability, and data egress, often to the detriment of customers. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority echoed this in its provisional findings on the cloud services market, published earlier this year, highlighting how restrictive licensing and technical barriers are actively limiting competition.

If we want to build a truly sovereign UK tech ecosystem, we can’t ignore this imbalance. Sovereignty only works if it sits on a competitive foundation. Supporting challenger providers and creating space for new entrants is our best hope at building a sovereign tech ecosystem.

Trust in AI starts with infrastructure we can control

By now, everyone’s heard the word AI being thrown into discussions a million times over. But there’s a quieter conversation happening behind the scenes that’s just as important: where the data sits, and who has access to it.

Trust in AI systems doesn’t come from flashy capabilities; it comes from knowing the data that feeds them is stored securely, processed transparently, and governed by laws you understand.

Right now, far too many AI tools are built on infrastructure hosted outside the UK, subject to legal and political frameworks that businesses here have no influence over. That disconnect creates a real tension: how can we lead on AI innovation if we don’t have full oversight of the systems that support it?

We can’t outsource the future of AI and expect to lead in it. That means investing in UK-based, sovereign cloud infrastructure that gives developers and businesses the confidence to build responsibly.

A British cloud, built for the next decade

If the UK is serious about leading in AI and cloud, we need to start with the fundamentals: backing British providers, enforcing fair market conditions, and building sovereign platforms that give organisations control over their data, costs, and future.

That means targeted public sector procurement that favours openness and interoperability. It means ending pricing structures that punish businesses for switching providers. And it means supporting infrastructure that keeps critical workloads within UK legal jurisdiction.

The conversation around sovereignty and competition is already happening inside UK businesses. London Tech Week is the chance for government and industry to catch up and start delivering the conditions that will let the UK tech sector scale on its own terms.