Dawn supercomputer gets sixfold boost thanks to £36m funding injection

The government has announced it is ploughing £36m into the Dawn supercomputer, which will lead to a sixfold increase in performance and make it one of the most powerful supercomputers in the UK.

Through the funding, Cambridge, which is home to Dawn, will be provided with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips, which the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said would be made available free of charge to UK researchers and startups.

The funding is part of the government’s AI opportunities action plan, which is backing British AI with over £2bn in public compute infrastructure – including expanding AI Research Resource (AIRR) 20-fold by 2030 and building a national supercomputer in Edinburgh.

In July 2025, the government unveiled a roadmap to deliver 420 Exaflops of compute power by 2030. At the time, chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “As technology advances, our plan for change is ensuring we are ahead of the curve, expanding our sovereign AI capabilities so we can make scientific breakthroughs, equip businesses with new tools for growth and create new jobs across the country.”

This latest investment builds on Cambridge’s position at the heart of the Oxford-Cambridge corridor. Dawn is based at the University of Cambridge, a part of the AIRR – a national programme that gives free access to the kind of high-powered computing usually only available to the world’s biggest tech companies.

It is already being used to support 350 projects. DSIT said scientists have been using the supercomputer to develop AI tools that could speed up personalised cancer vaccines, working out exactly which parts of a tumour the immune system needs to target. Others are using it to better understand the changing environment.

DSIT said the additional AI processing power, due to be deployed in Spring 2026, is set to help researchers develop faster, more accurate tools that help doctors spot diseases much earlier. It will also help in the development of smarter technology that cuts waiting times and makes public services easier to use, and offer better climate modelling to help communities prepare for extreme weather.

The funding will mean that UK researchers gain access through AIRR to AMD’s latest MI355X AI processors, deployed by Dell Technologies. DSIT said the more powerful chips will offer a way for researchers to analyse larger datasets, and work on more ambitious ideas and entirely new types of projects that were previously not possible.

Minister for AI Kanishka Narayan said: “The UK is home to world-class AI talent, but too often, our ambitious researchers and most promising startups have been held back by a lack of access to the computing power they need.

“This investment changes that – giving British innovators the tools to compete with the biggest players and develop AI that improves lives, from spotting diseases earlier to helping communities prepare for extreme weather, right across the country.”

AIRR, launched in July 2025, gives UK researchers, small businesses and startups free access to the supercomputing power usually only available to the largest tech companies. Alongside Dawn in Cambridge, AIRR currently includes Isambard-AI in Bristol.