Britain may have stumbled almost accidentally into one of the best positions in the world to win the AI race. The question is whether it has the wit and will to press on.
Recorded live at the Margaret Thatcher Conference in London, Charlotte Crosswell OBE chairs a conversation with Louis Mosley, Executive Vice Chair and Head of Palantir Technologies UK, and Tom Westgarth, Head of Growth at Fractile, on what it would take for Britain to translate its genuine and underrated AI advantages into lasting national prosperity.
The case for optimism is more concrete than you might think. Palantir employs one in five of its global workforce in Britain. Google DeepMind, builder of one of the world's three serious frontier AI models, is headquartered here. ElevenLabs, now valued at $11 billion, was spun out of Palantir's NHS team by Polish engineers who came to London for university and stayed. UK AI startups raised £7.8 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
As for jobs: anyone claiming certainty is, as Mosley puts it bluntly, lying. But the collar flip – where the barista outlasts the barrister – may be closer than comfortable.
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