The AI Opportunities Action Plan, unveiled in January 2025, outlines how AI will enhance the lives of working people and revitalize public services across the UK.
Laying the Foundation
A key goal of the plan is to bring in greater investment from AI firms through the creation of AI Growth Zones. These zones will be designed to accelerate planning approvals and provide the infrastructure necessary to support AI technologies. The first of these zones is already in development in Culham, Oxfordshire.
Of course, to utilize this infrastructure, significant processing power is essential. To address this, the government plans to increase public compute capacity twentyfold, with a new supercomputer already under development. Additionally, the plan includes establishing a new National Data Library to safely unlock the value of public data, and an AI Energy Council that will work alongside energy companies to understand and overcome the demands on resources as the use of AI becomes more commonplace.
Continued Investment
This shift has been a long time coming. In 2023, the IMF estimated that AI could boost productivity by up to 1.5 percentage points per year, potentially adding £47 billion to the UK economy annually over the next decade.
Data centers will play a critical role in these plans. The recent £14 billion joint investment by Vantage Data Centers, Nscale, and Kyndryl aims to build the AI infrastructure needed to maximize the technology’s potential.
- Vantage Data Centers, already the owner of Europe’s largest data center campus (the 50 acre CWL1 in Cardiff which totals 1.5 million square feet), has committed to an additional £12 billion to new UK facilities.
- Nscale has also demonstrated their dedication to advancing AI in the UK, by signing a contract to build the UK’s largest sovereign AI data center in Essex, England by the end of next year.
- Kyndryl has outlined plans to create 1,000 new AI-related jobs in Liverpool within the next three years, creating a hub that will drive AI rollouts across the country.
Where AddOn Comes In
To deliver high-speed connectivity required for bandwidth intensive AI systems, data center infrastructure requires the latest optical transceivers on the market. Whether developing a new network or enhancing older ones, purchasing these critical components directly from Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEMs) can be a costly venture.
That’s why the use of third-party, compatible transceivers from AddOn is crucial to ensure the plans rolled out by the government work effectively. They enable operators to use solutions that typically come at 30% of the cost of those offered by NEMs.
AddOn’s 800G OSFP 2xSR4 and 800G OSFP 2xDR4 transceivers are among the first major third-party 800G optics designed to support AI workloads. For short reach applications, 400G QSFP112 SR4 and 400G QSFP112 DR4 transceivers provide additional high-performance options. These innovations will prove key in supporting operators developing networks that will underpin the AI advancements of the future.
The UK government’s AI Opportunities Action plan is ambitious and unapologetic. Turning this vision into reality will require hard work, strategic decisions, and collaboration across the public and private sectors. For network operators and platform builders, shifting from established brands to third-party sellers like AddOn can be a challenging decision. However, to break down barriers to growth and enable an AI-led future for the UK, AddOn Networks provides the most cost-effective and scalable connectivity solutions.