DSIT Minister attends launch of Cambridge Zenith AI Supercomputer

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Professor Deborah Prentice, today welcomed the Minister for Digital Government at the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, (DSIT), James Frith MP, and Dr Lisa Su, Chair and CEO of AMD to an event at the Ray Dolby Centre to mark the official launch of the Zenith AI supercomputer, the UK's largest AI-for-science platform specially designed to bring together both simulation & AI communities on a single machine, funded by DSIT and UKRI.

More than 80 guests, including academics, public figures and innovators attended the event. Speakers highlighted the significant impact Zenith, designed and operated by Cambridge and built with AMD and Dell Technologies, will have in supporting research across health, energy and the environment.

Guests also learned about Sunrise , a supercomputer developed in partnership with the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), which is working to create fusion power and help the UK secure future energy independence.

The launch coincides with announcement of the Sovereign AI Innovation Lab (SAIL), a new Cambridge-led public-private initiative supported by AMD and Dell. SAIL will integrate novel AI technologies, create real-world test environments, and support a UK open-source AI software environment that enables researchers and innovators to build, validate and scale trusted AI tools on sovereign infrastructure across health, energy, environmental science, advanced engineering and the wider UK research and innovation ecosystem.

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice said, "Zenith, alongside Sunrise and SAIL, transforms what the University of Cambridge can achieve. By bringing together world leading researchers with national scale AI computing power, Cambridge is now equipped to tackle some of the most complex challenges of our time, from cancer, to climate, to clean energy and turn discovery into real world impact."

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, DSIT and Cabinet Office, James Frith said, "The launch of Zenith marks a major step forward in the UK's mission to harness AI for science. By bringing together world-class compute, research and industry expertise, we will unlock new discoveries in health, clean energy and the environment strengthening Britain's position as a global leader in AI innovation."

Speakers also included Steve Young SVP & UK MD for Dell Technologies, and Tim Bestwick, Interim CEO of the UKAEA. Discussions explored how the new AI supercomputer ecosystem will transform AI for science in the UK.

Dr Paul Calleja, Director of the Cambridge Research Computing Service, described the launch as "a major national moment in the UK's build-out of AI for science, sovereign AI capability and public-private technology partnership."

He highlighted how Zenith provides national capability, Sunrise demonstrates mission focused Sovereign Compute Capability, and SAIL creates a pathway for sustained technology development and impact.

Zenith and Cambridge Cancer Centre and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Dr Sarah Burge, Director of Clinical Integration, Cambridge Cancer Centre at the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust spoke about howZenith's increased capability is essential for cancer research, helping to deliver on the ambition of the Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital.

She highlighted Cambridge's existing strength in AI for healthcare. The Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital, due to open in 2029, aims to develop AI-assisted clinical decision support that can inform treatment decisions in real time at the point of care. Delivering on that ambition requires computational infrastructure at a scale the NHS does not currently have access to. Zenith will allow the Hospital to deliver the clinical insights that multimodal datasets and AI make possible, and to ensure the benefits reach patients across the whole NHS and beyond.

Zenith AI NHS demonstrator for cancer diagnosis improvement

Dr Joe Zhang, Chief Technology Officer for OneLondon and the AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare spoke about working with Zenith on MOSAIC (Multimodal Oncology Sovereign AI Collaboration) and connecting the NHS to national scale sovereign AI resources.

Dr Zhang explained how this research aims to build NHS cancer foundation models using data from leading NHS Trusts and Zenith to create a UK/NHS Sovereign AI asset that can be adapted for different clinical applications, deployed within the NHS to improve cancer diagnosis, treatment selection, outcomes prediction, and licensed for use in new therapeutics development.

Zenith and environmental forecasting

Dr Scott Hosking, Mission Director for Environmental Forecasting at The Alan Turing Institute, explained how they are using Zenith to help improve environmental forecasting.

He told the audience how sea ice forecasting is used to support safe maritime navigation, tracking wildlife migration across and beneath the ice, and strengthening understanding of the climate systems that shape weather across the Northern Hemisphere. IceNet, a pan-Arctic sea ice forecasting system that can outperform traditional models months ahead, is able to find further gains in accuracy achieved through retraining on Zenith. This joint research is being undertaken with the British Antarctic Survey and The Arctic University of Norway.

Sunrise and the UKAEA accelerate fusion energy development

Tim Bestwick, Interim CEO of the UKAEA explained how, rather than relying only on costly and time-consuming experiments, scientists and engineers will use Sunrise to create detailed computer models and simulations.

Using AI, Sunrise, he said, will help researchers understand the behaviours of fusion plasmas, develop materials to withstand the extreme conditions inside a fusion power plant, and test designs before they are built. This reduces development time, lowers costs, and helps bring commercial fusion energy closer to reality.