Ross Taylor, former Meta reasoning lead, argues DeepMind's dominance historically hindered independent UK AI startups

A few words on the Sovereign AI debate, having built several LLMs in Meta while in the UK and now working as a UK based startup:

1. Lots of people are trying to do the right thing to make the UK a better place to start AI companies. Time lags until the benefit show, but you should judge on the intent now. I support the direction of travel!

2. DeepMind has been enormously beneficial for the UK, but it has muddied the waters for a sovereign LLM company to emerge as (until recently) the Government continued to celebrate it as a British achievement / push it as a national champion.

3. Similarly, people are now celebrating recent US investment in King’s Cross, while also wanting more UK sovereignty. Clearly some income effects here, but I would worry about the substitution effects too. AI is not like other types of foreign investment.

4. The relevant talent nexuses in UK that could develop a competitive foundation model are from GDM and old Meta AI GenAI. Also some folks from smaller groups, ex Conjecture, Stability. The talent is still there, although a lot was snapped up by US FM companies in the past year. I personally think it’s not too difficult to develop new talent either from UK universities, but you probably need an ex GDM or Meta core (Gemini or Llama). Or if not: show evidence first (technical reports) before claiming you can do it.

5. Building an LLM is very different from doing regular AI research - skillset is different. Former is closer to engineering; long hours, often unsexy work. Important to distinguish between these two types of talent in the UK ecosystem; arguably too much focus on the latter / ideas guys.

6. On research - DeepSeek R1 post-train cost $300k . Yes, they also needed an ablation budget and to train a base model, invest in infra and talent - and yes the cost of an R1 moment is increasing year on year - but the idea that you need $1bn plus immediately to show results is complete FUD. You need billions to scale, not to validate new directions.

7. In my experience, every failed LLM effort (from model results perspective) I witnessed in the past came from a combination of poor leadership, politics, unclear vision, and premature scaling. Good efforts usually started from small teams who had worked with each other for a long time, had shared thesis, and scaled progressively in bite-sized pieces. Some recent lessons here for neolabs as well.

8. Things take time. Eg we’ve spent ~12 months mostly on internal infra just to get into the position to be able to make big swings. It’s important to nurture new companies through the initial phase. Expectation management is also crucial. I think expecting new UK companies to have single big bang releases is very dangerous; sort of like overwatering a plant. The correct release pattern is “decent”. “decent”, “decent”, “quite good actually”, “holy shit”.

9. Please don’t allow politicians or journalists to kill recent or upcoming AI investment efforts. We will need way more - at the price of potential inefficiency in places - as AI is existential for the country. Ambitious projects are usually incredibly fragile in the early stages; look after them!

10. Mythos is a good triggering moment, but what’s coming will make it look like a toy, so it’s worth building for what’s coming in 5 years time - not a current generation model.

Very proud to be building in the UK - more to share on that soon - alongside many other great early stage AI companies! 🇬🇧

A few words on the Sovereign AI debate, having built several LLMs in Meta while in the UK and now working as a UK based startup:

1. Lots of people are trying to do the right thing to make the UK a better place to start AI companies. Time lags until the benefit show, but you should judge on the intent now. I support the direction of travel!

2. DeepMind has been enormously beneficial for the UK, but it has muddied the waters for a sovereign LLM company to emerge as (until recently) the Government continued to celebrate it as a British achievement / push it as a national champion.

3. Similarly, people are now celebrating recent US investment in King’s Cross, while also wanting more UK sovereignty. Clearly some income effects here, but I would worry about the substitution effects too. AI is not like other types of foreign investment.

4. The relevant talent nexuses in UK that could develop a competitive foundation model are from GDM and old Meta AI GenAI. Also some folks from smaller groups, ex Conjecture, Stability. The talent is still there, although a lot was snapped up by US FM companies in the past year. I personally think it’s not too difficult to develop new talent either from UK universities, but you probably need an ex GDM or Meta core (Gemini or Llama). Or if not: show evidence first (technical reports) before claiming you can do it.

5. Building an LLM is very different from doing regular AI research - skillset is different. Former is closer to engineering; long hours, often unsexy work. Important to distinguish between these two types of talent in the UK ecosystem; arguably too much focus on the latter / ideas guys.

6. On research - DeepSeek R1 post-train cost $300k . Yes, they also needed an ablation budget and to train a base model, invest in infra and talent - and yes the cost of an R1 moment is increasing year on year - but the idea that you need $1bn plus immediately to show results is complete FUD. You need billions to scale, not to validate new directions.

7. In my experience, every failed LLM effort (from model results perspective) I witnessed in the past came from a combination of poor leadership, politics, unclear vision, and premature scaling. Good efforts usually started from small teams who had worked with each other for a long time, had shared thesis, and scaled progressively in bite-sized pieces. Some recent lessons here for neolabs as well.

8. Things take time. Eg we’ve spent ~12 months mostly on internal infra just to get into the position to be able to make big swings. It’s important to nurture new companies through the initial phase. Expectation management is also crucial. I think expecting new UK companies to have single big bang releases is very dangerous; sort of like overwatering a plant. The correct release pattern is “decent”. “decent”, “decent”, “quite good actually”, “holy shit”.

9. Please don’t allow politicians or journalists to kill recent or upcoming AI investment efforts. We will need way more - at the price of potential inefficiency in places - as AI is existential for the country. Ambitious projects are usually incredibly fragile in the early stages; look after them!

10. Mythos is a good triggering moment, but what’s coming will make it look like a toy, so it’s worth building for what’s coming in 5 years time - not a current generation model.

Very proud to be building in the UK - more to share on that soon - alongside many other great early stage AI companies! 🇬🇧

A few words on the Sovereign AI debate, having built several LLMs in Meta while in the UK and now working as a UK based startup:

1. Lots of people are trying to do the right thing to make the UK a better place to start AI companies. Time lags until the benefit show, but you should judge on the intent now. I support the direction of travel!

2. DeepMind has been enormously beneficial for the UK, but it has muddied the waters for a sovereign LLM company to emerge as (until recently) the Government continued to celebrate it as a British achievement / push it as a national champion.

3. Similarly, people are now celebrating recent US investment in King’s Cross, while also wanting more UK sovereignty. Clearly some income effects here, but I would worry about the substitution effects too. AI is not like other types of foreign investment.

4. The relevant talent nexuses in UK that could develop a competitive foundation model are from GDM and old Meta AI GenAI. Also some folks from smaller groups, ex Conjecture, Stability. The talent is still there, although a lot was snapped up by US FM companies in the past year. I personally think it’s not too difficult to develop new talent either from UK universities, but you probably need an ex GDM or Meta core (Gemini or Llama). Or if not: show evidence first (technical reports) before claiming you can do it.

5. Building an LLM is very different from doing regular AI research - skillset is different. Former is closer to engineering; long hours, often unsexy work. Important to distinguish between these two types of talent in the UK ecosystem; arguably too much focus on the latter / ideas guys.

6. On research - DeepSeek R1 post-train cost $300k . Yes, they also needed an ablation budget and to train a base model, invest in infra and talent - and yes the cost of an R1 moment is increasing year on year - but the idea that you need $1bn plus immediately to show results is complete FUD. You need billions to scale, not to validate new directions.

7. In my experience, every failed LLM effort (from model results perspective) I witnessed in the past came from a combination of poor leadership, politics, unclear vision, and premature scaling. Good efforts usually started from small teams who had worked with each other for a long time, had shared thesis, and scaled progressively in bite-sized pieces. Some recent lessons here for neolabs as well.

8. Things take time. Eg we’ve spent ~12 months mostly on internal infra just to get into the position to be able to make big swings. It’s important to nurture new companies through the initial phase. Expectation management is also crucial. I think expecting new UK companies to have single big bang releases is very dangerous; sort of like overwatering a plant. The correct release pattern is “decent”. “decent”, “decent”, “quite good actually”, “holy shit”.

9. Please don’t allow politicians or journalists to kill recent or upcoming AI investment efforts. We will need way more - at the price of potential inefficiency in places - as AI is existential for the country. Ambitious projects are usually incredibly fragile in the early stages; look after them!

10. Mythos is a good triggering moment, but what’s coming will make it look like a toy, so it’s worth building for what’s coming in 5 years time - not a current generation model.

Very proud to be building in the UK - more to share on that soon - alongside many other great early stage AI companies! 🇬🇧

A few words on the Sovereign AI debate, having built several LLMs in Meta while in the UK and now working as a UK based startup:

1. Lots of people are trying to do the right thing to make the UK a better place to start AI companies. Time lags until the benefit show, but you should judge on the intent now. I support the direction of travel!

2. DeepMind has been enormously beneficial for the UK, but it has muddied the waters for a sovereign LLM company to emerge as (until recently) the Government continued to celebrate it as a British achievement / push it as a national champion.

3. Similarly, people are now celebrating recent US investment in King’s Cross, while also wanting more UK sovereignty. Clearly some income effects here, but I would worry about the substitution effects too. AI is not like other types of foreign investment.

4. The relevant talent nexuses in UK that could develop a competitive foundation model are from GDM and old Meta AI GenAI. Also some folks from smaller groups, ex Conjecture, Stability. The talent is still there, although a lot was snapped up by US FM companies in the past year. I personally think it’s not too difficult to develop new talent either from UK universities, but you probably need an ex GDM or Meta core (Gemini or Llama). Or if not: show evidence first (technical reports) before claiming you can do it.

5. Building an LLM is very different from doing regular AI research - skillset is different. Former is closer to engineering; long hours, often unsexy work. Important to distinguish between these two types of talent in the UK ecosystem; arguably too much focus on the latter / ideas guys.

6. On research - DeepSeek R1 post-train cost $300k . Yes, they also needed an ablation budget and to train a base model, invest in infra and talent - and yes the cost of an R1 moment is increasing year on year - but the idea that you need $1bn plus immediately to show results is complete FUD. You need billions to scale, not to validate new directions.

7. In my experience, every failed LLM effort (from model results perspective) I witnessed in the past came from a combination of poor leadership, politics, unclear vision, and premature scaling. Good efforts usually started from small teams who had worked with each other for a long time, had shared thesis, and scaled progressively in bite-sized pieces. Some recent lessons here for neolabs as well.

8. Things take time. Eg we’ve spent ~12 months mostly on internal infra just to get into the position to be able to make big swings. It’s important to nurture new companies through the initial phase. Expectation management is also crucial. I think expecting new UK companies to have single big bang releases is very dangerous; sort of like overwatering a plant. The correct release pattern is “decent”. “decent”, “decent”, “quite good actually”, “holy shit”.

9. Please don’t allow politicians or journalists to kill recent or upcoming AI investment efforts. We will need way more - at the price of potential inefficiency in places - as AI is existential for the country. Ambitious projects are usually incredibly fragile in the early stages; look after them!

10. Mythos is a good triggering moment, but what’s coming will make it look like a toy, so it’s worth building for what’s coming in 5 years time - not a current generation model.

Very proud to be building in the UK - more to share on that soon - alongside many other great early stage AI companies! 🇬🇧