Emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, quantum computing and aerospace engineering are set to drive growing demand for specialist facilities, speakers at London Tech Week said.
While much of the discussion focused on technological breakthroughs, several sessions highlighted the infrastructure needed to support them, from cleanroom-enabled pharmaceutical laboratories and semiconductor plants to advanced manufacturing facilities, data centres and aerospace production environments.
Opening the day, UK Deputy Prime Minister, David Lammy, said AI would play a major role in shaping future industries and employment.
"We know that AI will create jobs for our young people that haven't been invented yet," he said. "We know it will change jobs dramatically”
We want to be early adopters, and there are things in our action plan that we have to do.
Aerospace and modular infrastructure
During a panel titled The Limits of AI Data Centres and What Comes Next, speakers discussed how modular manufacturing approaches are being used to support both aerospace projects and future computing infrastructure.
Philip Johnston, founder and CEO of StarCloud, outlined plans to develop data centres in space to address the growing energy demands of AI, while describing how modular facilities are assembled offsite before deployment.
StarCloud is an aerospace and computing company, previously known as Lumen Orbit, that builds and deploys data centres in space to solve Earth's AI energy bottleneck.
Everything is built offsite in manufacturing facilities, located in areas where you have an abundance of engineering resources.
The concept of deploying a data centre in space raises new challenges for contamination control.
Space-based data centres would require highly controlled manufacturing and assembly environments on Earth while operating in extreme conditions where maintenance, upgrades and equipment replacement are significantly more complex than in conventional facilities.
Johnston added that integrating cooling systems and getting enough construction workers to build the modular facilities remains key challenges as demand for advanced computing infrastructure grows.
“You have to have the expertise available to do the build out and overcome the challenges of trying to relocate labour to remote areas, whether it’s a Gigafactory in West Texas or in an AI growth zone in Scotland.”
Quantum computing's infrastructure challenge
The relationship between AI and quantum computing was explored during a panel examining whether quantum technologies will drive the next wave of AI breakthroughs.
Steven Brierley, founder and CEO of Riverlane, said quantum computing offers the potential to solve problems beyond the reach of conventional systems.
"We're using the strange powers of quantum mechanics for the first time to solve problems that never get solved," he said.
Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave Quantum, argued that quantum technologies could help address the growing energy requirements of AI.
Quantum will be so important to AI because of power consumption.
"The models will continue to grow and be larger and larger, we will be using more and more energy, and we need to be able to do it more efficiently," said Baratz.
Baratz noted that quantum systems require specialised cooling technologies and dedicated data centre environments, highlighting the significant infrastructure needed to support the sector's growth.
Dr Jan Goetz, CEO and co-founder of IQM Quantum Computers, said success would depend on building entire supply chains around the technology.
It's not about getting a computer in a data centre. It's about building an ecosystem around it.
“It's about building up the whole industry and the supply chain."
The UK government has committed £1bn to support the country's quantum ecosystem, alongside wider investments in computing infrastructure, including a £750m supercomputer programme, £250m for novel AI inference chips and £400m to support future semiconductor companies.
AI accelerates drug discovery
The implications of AI for pharmaceutical research were also highlighted by Max Jaderberg, President of Isomorphic Labs, who said the technology is dramatically reducing the time needed to identify potential medicines.
"A big pharma company will work on this for 20 years and then within a matter of months, by using our models, we are able to start designing new molecular matter," he said.
Jaderberg said the ability to compress years of research into months could have significant implications for pharmaceutical manufacturing and laboratory infrastructure.
The implications could potentially increase demand for advanced research environments and cleanroom-enabled production capacity as more drug candidates progress into development.
Conclusion
For the cleanroom sector, the discussions reinforced the growing importance of controlled environments across a widening range of industries.
Whether supporting aerospace manufacturing, quantum hardware, semiconductor production or pharmaceutical research, specialist facilities are becoming a critical part of the infrastructure underpinning future technologies.