Suzanne Ashman, one of London’s most prosperous capitalists and the daughter-in-law of Sir Tony Blair, has been appointed manager of the government’s £500 million Sovereign AI fund, a vehicle designed to channel patient money to Britain’s domestic intelligence champions and loosen the country’s reliance on Sili.
The appointment, confirmed on Tuesday, puts Ashman in the position of one of the most watched pots of taxpayer-funded money in the UK’s tech sector. Launched in April, the Sovereign AI fund is led by James Wise, a partner at Balderton Capital, and is tasked with investing alongside private backers in companies that the Treasury considers to be critical to Britain’s long-term competitiveness.
Ashman, who married Euan Blair in 2013, cut her teeth at two highly regarded seed and growth capital investors, LocalGlobe and Latitude, where she served as general partner. In its statement, Sovereign AI described him as “one of the UK’s most respected investors”, crediting him with “a decade of backing innovators who have come to define a generation of British technology”.
His track record for LocalGlobe and Latitude provides a window into the kind of bet a new fund might favor. He led the firm’s investments in Motorway, a used car market now valued at more than $1 billion, and in Open Cosmos, a fast-growing satellite manufacturer and operator engaged in earth observation missions. Both are textbook examples of a growth phase of British business that has historically struggled without bringing in leading American or Asian investors.
The family size of the appointment is not difficult to ignore. Euan Blair has become a fixture on the British tech scene since founding Multiverse, now the country’s largest learning provider, in 2016. The combination of a high-profile political surname and one of London’s most active investors moving into a government-backed role is sure to attract scrutiny, although Ashman’s investment record stands on its own.
Ashman arrives just as the fund unveils its third investment. Sovereign AI has joined the latest funding round of Isomorphic Labs, the London-headquartered drug discovery business spun off from Google DeepMind in 2021 by Sir Demis Hassabis. Isomorphic announced it has raised $2.1 billion in a venture that includes Thrive Capital and Abu Dhabi’s MGX, along with existing backers Alphabet and Google Ventures.
Isomorphic said the proceeds will support an aggressive recruiting campaign and help it sell its “drug design engine,” which uses AI to predict how selected drugs will behave in the human body, a process the company believes can squeeze years out of the drug development timeline. The Sovereign AI fund declined to disclose the size of its cheque, although the vehicle typically writes tickets of between £1 million and £20 million.
Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer at Alphabet and Google, said: “Isomorphic Labs has already made incredible progress in using AI to accelerate drug discovery and we are excited about this momentum and the early promise of the technology platform.”
For SME watchers, the Isomorphic deal is a useful indicator of how the fund intends to spend its money. Joséphine Kant, head of business at Sovereign AI, said: “Isomorphic is one of the most impactful companies being built anywhere in the world today and it’s being built in Britain.
The political stakes are equally clear. Liz Kendall, the science and technology secretary, called Isomorphic’s work “AI at its highest level”, arguing that it could “completely reshape how medicines are discovered, cutting back years of progress and giving real hope to people living with devastating diseases”.
Whether the Sovereign AI fund can move the needle on Britain’s wider AI-first SMEs, those without DeepMind’s pedigree or billion-dollar valuation, will be the real test of Ashman’s time. With £500 million to spend and money being returned to the private sector the private market alone is unlikely to grow, the new managing partner has the firepower and political weight behind him. The question now is whether the fund can identify the next generation of British tech leaders before American capital does first.
