At CYBERUK 2026 on April 22, UK Security Minister Dan Jarvis asked leading AI companies to work with the government to build AI-powered cyber defense capabilities — autonomous systems that can identify and patch vulnerabilities at a speed and scale no human team can match. The government announced a £90 million, three-year investment to strengthen cyber resilience for SMEs and will publish a National Cyber Action Plan this summer. The call comes as nationally significant incidents handled by the National Cyber Security Centre more than doubled in 2025, driven partly by hostile states running automated AI attack tools.