UK Public Sector AI Procurement Tracker

Tussell's AI Procurement Tracker is the market's go-to benchmark for measuring the scale of AI procurement across the UK public sector. It is updated monthly and draws on data from Tussell's market intelligence platform.

Navigate through the Tracker using the contents table below.

Contents:

• Introduction
• The AI Procurement Tracker
  • June 2026 Update: key takeaways
  • Chart 1: Value & volume of AI contracts over time
  • Chart 2: Top AI buyers
  • Chart 3: Top AI suppliers
  • *New* Chart 4: AI procurement by supplier location
  • Chart 5: AI contracts by type
  • Chart 6: AI contracts by procurement framework

• What is the data telling us?
• What is the methodology?
• AI Tracker - in the media

Last updated: 10th June 2026

NB: On November 4th, Sky News' Sam Coates used data from this Tracker to report on the government's £3.3bn worth of awarded AI contracts. Watch his full explainer here.

Introduction

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is capturing the world’s imagination, and that includes the UK public sector.

Public bodies have been purchasing AI-based solutions for well over a decade, but recent breakthroughs - specifically in Generative AI since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 - have spurred a fresh wave of interest in how government could benefit from this rapidly-evolving technology.

Whilst loud voices debate the future of AI, we at Tussell wanted to cut through the noise and look at the facts.

We’ve set out to answer a simple question: How much has the government spent on procuring AI so far, and what is it buying?

Introducing: Tussell's AI Procurement Tracker.

Inspired by an earlier tracker we produced to measure Covid-related procurement contracts, this new Tracker draws on data from our own market intelligence platform to map the landscape of AI adoption across government.

Our AI Procurement Tracker is your go-to source of fact-checked data to understand which AI capabilities the government is buying, who from and at what cost.

This will be essential reading if:

1. Your company supplies tech to government and you want to follow the latest market trends, or

2. You work in a public body and want to know how your peers are
   adapting to rapid change, or

3. You are a journalist, commentator or policy advisor in search of

   hard facts to back up your research.

The AI Procurement Tracker

Between 01/01/2018 and the 05/06/2026:

The UK public sector awarded

1,977 AI contracts

In total, they were worth

£4 billion

June 2026 Update: key takeaways

The government wants to make the UK a global AI leader.

A key part of that strategy is building “sovereign” AI capability by backing UK-based AI firms.

In April, the UK Government announced it would be investing £500 million in AI start-ups through its new Sovereign AI Fund. The Technology Secretary, Liz Kendall MP, also announced the government's ambitions to secure more of the world's chip supply.

Procurement is one of the biggest levers the government can use to support these aims.

Our Tracker shows clear, consistent growth in AI procurement over the past few years. More contracts (both volume and value) have been awarded so far in 2026 than in all of 2023 combined. But are UK firms benefiting from this surge?

To benchmark this, we've added a new dataset to this Tracker, showing where suppliers awarded AI contracts since 2018 are based. This analysis reveals an interesting tension at the heart of the government's AI agenda ... more on that below.

Is your business struggling to keep on top of the surge in new public sector AI opportunities? Get in touch with the team to see how we can help.

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Chart 1: Value and volume of awarded contracts, since 2018

This chart shows that both the number and value of AI contracts have grown significantly since 2018, with more contracts awarded in 2025 (both by volume and value) than in any prior year.

The spike in contract value in 2021 was caused a £1 billion 'Supercomputing 2020+' contract, awarded by the Met Office to Microsoft.

👉  To download a sample of the underlying data, click here.

Chart 2: Largest buyers of AI by contract value, since 2018 

Chart 3: Largest suppliers of AI by contract value, since 2018

*NEW* Chart 4: AI contract award value, mapped by HQ of awarded supplier *

The launch of the Sovereign AI Fund makes clear the UK Government's desire to promote UK-based AI firms. But is this transpiring through procurement?

Our analysis paints a conflicting picture. 

US-based firms have been awarded the highest-value contracts, totalling £2.2 billion since 2018.

UK-based suppliers, by contrast, have received just over half of this amount, at £1.4 billion.

After that, spending falls sharply. France, the next highest-earning supplier country, accounts for just £77 million of AI contracts.

This points to a clear tension. As the UK public sector adopts AI, it remains heavily reliant on major US suppliers. That sits uneasily alongside the Government’s aim to promote sovereign AI capability, leaving ministers to balance two competing priorities: backing UK-based AI firms, while still drawing on the scale and expertise of overseas AI giants.

* This analysis was conducted using Beaurau van Dijk's FAME database. It has been manually cleaned and augmented by Tussell to give an accurate picture of the ultimate owner of a company’s country of origin. If this could not be identified, the company's headquarters was used as a proxy.

Chart 5: Breakdown of AI-related contract value by theme

The UK public sector is harnessing AI to pursue a wide range of objectives - and this diversity is reflected in the variety of contracts being awarded.

To better understand where government procurement is focused, we asked ChatGPT to categorise these contracts using taxonomies derived from the three strategic pillars of the AI Opportunities Action Plan.

Please note this AI categorisation is still a work-in-progress, and results may change as we improve the model.

Here are the results:

Below, we've spotlighted some key contracts from these categories to illustrate what each means.

• Compute & Infrastructure - focuses on providing the physical and digital backbone for AI - from high-performance computing and cloud platforms to sovereign infrastructure that ensures secure, scalable access to compute resources (e.g. the Met Office's £1bn Supercomputing contract)
  
  

• Adoption & Deployment - contracts which promote the piloting and scaling of AI projects, and encouraging uptake across society (e.g. National Highway's £35mn contract with Deloitte to introduce a 'Digital Lab' in their Chief Data Office)
  
  

• Innovation & Frontier AI - supports cutting-edge AI research and the development (e.g. IBM's £13.5mn contract to deliver 'GenAI Lighthouse Projects' within the DWP)
  
  

• Data Management & Enablement - covers unlocking, standardising and sharing high-value datasets so that AI models can be developed and deployed responsibly (e.g. NHS England's £182mn contract with Palantir to provide a 'Federated Data Platform')
  
  

• Governance, Management & Regulation - contracts that promote the safe and ethical use of AI in society (e.g. Anmut Consulting's £25mn contract with National Highways to develop their Chief Data Office's 'Data Governance & Assurance' division, including their AI Governance Strategy)
  
  

• Skills & Workforce - up-skilling staff to ensure they can properly harness the potential of AI in their work (e.g. Kainos' £7.4mn contract with the MOD to provide staff "the capacity and skills required to deliver AI and AS concepts sustainably and at scale")
  
  

• Market Confidence & Public Trust - contracts that promote transparency, ethics and public engagement around AI.

Chart 6: Top 5 AI frameworks (by value of call-off contracts)

Many of the identified AI contracts were awarded via a framework agreement or Dynamic Purchasing System.

These preferred-supplier agreements enable contracting authorities to expedite their procurement by publishing and awarding tenders to a closed group of pre-vetted suppliers.

Tussell's framework intelligence shows that just over a third of the contracts awarded since Jan 2018 were called-off via a framework agreement.

The wider public sector, by comparison, awards roughly 1 in every 4 contracts via a framework, meaning buyers seem to be harnessing frameworks more frequently when purchasing AI-related services.

👉  Want to dig into the data for yourself? Download a sample here.

What is the AI Procurement Tracker telling us?

AI procurement is accelerating. 2025 was the biggest ever year for AI government contracts by a wide margin.

But the scale of AI procurement should not be over-emphasised (yet).

£4 billion sounds like a lot, but remember: over a quarter of this stems from a single £1 billion contract in 2021.

But even when taken at face value, £4 billion still only accounts for roughly 3% of the total value of all IT Services and Software contracts awarded by the public sector over the Jan 2018 - Jan 2026 period (£123bn)

The rate of increase in the volume and value of AI-related contracts each year will likely mean this proportion will grow over the coming decade - but, for the time being, AI-related procurement remains a small sub-section of government tech spending.

What's the methodology behind the AI Procurement Tracker?

The AI Tracker draws on open public procurement data, aggregated by Tussell’s market intelligence platform.

We have filtered all awarded contracts in the period January 2018 to March 2026 for only those containing keywords in their title or description that are capabilities, products or companies.

For the categorisation of the AI contracts, we've used ChatGPT with human oversight.

AI Tracker - in the media

We're proud that the national media has utilised Tussell's AI Procurement Tracker to report on the state of AI procurement in the UK public sector. Examples include:

• Sky News, Revealed: How much the government's spending on AI, Nov 2025

• ComputerWeekly, Can UK government achieve ambition to become AI powerhouse?, Jan 2025

• UKAuthority, Predictive analytics accounts for most of public sector's AI spending, Jan 2025

• The Guardian, UK government to list use of AI on mandatory register, Nov 2024

• Diginomica, AI in Healthcare - how to support a workforce of health experts but tech novices?, Nov 2024

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Measuring what is and isn’t AI is highly subjective.

We stand by our prudently narrow definition based on explicitly AI-related keywords, but we will continue to iterate on our exact definition as time goes on.

If you have any questions or comments about how the AI Procurement Tracker was compiled, email us at contact@tussell.com

FAQs

Who is Tussell?

Tussell is the market's trusted source of insight on UK government contracts & spending. Our premium market intelligence platform is designed for, and used by, top suppliers to government to make data-led commercial decisions in their public sector market. We aggregate and enhance data on UK government pre-tender buying signals, tenders, contracts, framework agreements, invoice data and key decision-maker contact details.

How do I find government AI opportunities and contracts?

You can use open source portals, like Find a Tender, to be alerted to newly published AI-related tenders - but functionality is limited, and you risk missing opportunities found across other lesser-known portals. Platforms like Tussell aggregate all public sector opportunities together into a single place, streamlining your process and giving you the confidence you're not missing out on opportunities.

Who is winning government AI contracts, and who is awarding them?

You can use open source portals, like Find a Tender, to run analysis on who is winning and awarding government AI contracts - but this would be a massively time-intensive process, and be reliant on an inherently fragmented and incomplete database. Platforms like Tussell collect and enhance all available data on live and historic government contracts, enabling you to see in just a couple of clicks who is awarding and winning AI contracts, inc. their value, duration and details.