The resignation of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has blown open British politics, with the only-just-elected Andy Burnham now the clear frontrunner to enter Downing Street. But for the UK tech industry, the bigger question may not be who becomes Prime Minister, but who gets the keys to the Treasury. After years of stop-start policy on startups, scaleups, AI, capital markets and R&D, the next Chancellor will decide whether to continue on the path cut by Rachel Reeves, someone whom most observers think has taken on board many of the industry's concerns, though sometimes not enough. The future of how the UK operates in the AI era now hangs in the balance, and whatever happens will equally have ripple effects across the nearby EU, which is struggling to catch up in an era when Trump can ban a Frontier AI model on a Friday afternoon.
Pathfounders went door-knocking around some of the UK’s tech players to gauge their opinions. We are also running an ongoing poll to see which potential Chancellor is catching the industry’s eye.
The message from investors and ecosystem leaders was fairly simple: don’t lose momentum, don’t spook the markets, and don’t treat AI and deep tech as side projects inside Whitehall.
For all the criticism levelled at Rachel Reeves, several figures said the current government had at least begun to internalise the concerns of founders and investors. The danger now is that a drastic change of leadership turns into a total policy reset just as the UK is beginning to put serious money and political weight behind AI, quantum, compute and scale-up capital.
“Continuation is so important right now,” said Pippa Lamb, venture capitalist and co-founder of Project Ambition. “Whoever takes up the mantle must ensure current momentum is maintained. This time could not be more critical for the future of our science and technology in our country, and we cannot squander that for the sake of Westminster infighting.”
That view was echoed by Amelia Armour, Partner, Early Stage Funds at Amadeus Capital Partners, who argued that the UK has built “real momentum in deep tech” and now needs “stability and clarity”. For Armour, the new Chancellor’s first job is not to announce another slogan, but to make sure the existing machinery actually fires: the sovereign AI fund, British Business Bank support, EIS, and the government’s quantum package.
“The priority now is to see these commitments through at scale and provide long-term policy certainty,” she said. “With a steady hand, the UK can secure its position as a global leader in era-defining technologies.”
But continuity alone is not enough. The second theme was scale. The UK, several argued, has become good at convening summits, launching reviews and setting up funds. It has been far worse at moving with the speed and aggression of the United States.
Pathfounders run an exclusive poll of the industry to indicate their preferred possible next Chancellor
Nazo Moosa, Managing Director at Paladin Capital, put it bluntly: “The UK has made impressive early moves on AI and deep tech, but now it needs to stop thinking like a startup and start acting like a superpower.”
For Moosa, the next Chancellor needs to think in decades, not spending cycles, and treat AI and deep tech as core economic infrastructure rather than discretionary innovation spend. That means expanding initiatives like the sovereign AI fund and British Business Bank capital, as well as being prepared to back category-defining companies with the same confidence seen in the US.
This is the crux of the Treasury question. A Prime Minister can set the tone, but it’s the Chancellor who directs investment policy.
The third theme was the state itself. Hussein Kanji, Partner of Hoxton Ventures, argued that the next occupant of Number 11 needs to combine fiscal credibility with technological imagination: someone “strong enough financially to make the tough calls in the short term” without frightening the bond market, but also “visionary enough to lean into tech” as a route to growth.
For Kanji, AI should not only be something the UK funds in the private sector. It should be used to remake the public sector. He pointed to government operations and the NHS as obvious places where technology could lower costs, improve services and create budget headroom for longer-term bets.
“You almost want a Chancellor who tells all the government departments: you must automate 15-25% of your services with tech by 2028,” he said.
The final theme was urgency. Carolyn Dawson, CEO of Founders Forum Group and Tech Nation, warned that frontier AI will not pause for a Labour leadership contest. Chip procurement, compute funding, AI skills, and the wider policy framework around AI are all moving targets. Global competitors are not hanging around for Westminster to get its house in order.
“The development of AI frontier models won’t wait for the British state to settle,” said Dawson. “Whoever it is that takes the keys to Number 11 will need to hit the ground running.”
Dawson pointed to the announcements made around London Tech Week as evidence that the government - as it stands now - had begun to grasp the opportunity. But the implication is that a new political team might treat tech as a secondary brief, risking the gains already made.
Echoing that was Eva Barboni, Executive Director of Enterprise Britain, who said: “The single most important mission for the next Prime Minister and Chancellor is building a Britain that rewards risk. That means making it easier for successful founders to back the next generation of startups. It means getting pension funds off the sidelines and into British venture.”
Taken all together, the collective industry’s messaging, at least from these individuals who interact with the cutting edge of startups every day, is unusually consistent. The next Chancellor needs to be fiscally credible, fund frontier technology and infrastructure, execute existing commitments under the previous political leadership, and employ AI inside government itself.
