Introduction & Strategic Aims of Cooperation
New UK–Italy bilateral frameworks explicitly prioritise cooperation in science and technology across AI, quantum and HPC.
Overview
New UK–Italy bilateral frameworks explicitly prioritise cooperation in science and technology. This agenda provides an opportunity to galvanise partnerships in critical technologies — Artificial Intelligence (AI), Quantum Technologies (QT), and High-Performance Computing (HPC) — which form the core infrastructure for future competitiveness, security, and technological sovereignty.
- Focusing on AI, QT, and HPC targets the general-purpose technologies behind applications including advanced simulation, drug discovery, climate modelling, and secure communications.
- These technologies sit at the intersection of economic security, defence, and industrial policy, making collaboration a way to deepen the broader strategic partnership.
- The three fields are converging into hybrid systems where HPC provides the backbone, quantum accelerates specific tasks, and AI orchestrates models and workflows.
- Italy is already piloting this convergence through EuroHPC-backed hybrid quantum–HPC systems (ICSC, IT4LIA), while the UK brings strong AI-for-science, genomics, and finance capabilities.
The UK-Italy science and technology relationship is deepening, with the Prime Ministers’ Joint Statement in September 2024; the launch of the UK-Italy Science and Technology Dialogue in June 2025; and work underway towards the signing of a Science and Technology MoU. The emphasis on cooperation across AI, QT, and HPC sits within these frameworks. It speaks to the strategic possibilities surrounding UK cooperation with Italy — a country with an extensive scientific community and home to two of the fastest supercomputers globally.
Enhancing cooperation across these three strategic technologies also supports broader UK Government objectives, including deepening trade relations, meeting objectives of the Strategic Defence Review, and creating greater economic and regional resilience for the UK and Europe. There is a need not only for foundational research, but also to get the technologies out of the lab and into settings where they can contribute to national and European resilience.
“Quantum technologies are no longer just a field of advanced research reserved for a few specialists... but are already a specific lever of national security, as they impact information protection, the resilience of critical infrastructure, deterrence capacity, and ultimately a nation's technological sovereignty”
— Guido Crosetto, Minister of Defence, Italy
Why AI, Quantum, and HPC
Focusing UK–Italy collaboration on AI, quantum, and HPC brings together the core technological foundations for future economic competitiveness, security, and digital sovereignty. Both countries already have complementary strengths and sunk investments across these domains — from EuroHPC/ICSC and IT4LIA on the Italian side to the UK’s frontier compute, quantum programmes, and Horizon-linked R&D access. The three technology fields are at different levels of advancement, providing a range of opportunities across the research and innovation lifecycle.
Technological Convergence
Quantum, AI, and HPC are increasingly converging around the premise that no single compute paradigm can tackle the hardest problems alone. The emerging standard is heterogeneous systems that route workloads to whichever mechanism — classical CPU/GPU clusters, AI accelerators, or quantum processors — handles them most efficiently. Quantum handles discrete optimisation and simulation tasks intractable classically; HPC provides the classical backbone; and AI manages workflow orchestration, error mitigation, and algorithm design across the stack.
Both the UK and Italy recognise, and are spearheading, this convergence. A clear example is CINECA’s Leonardo supercomputer complex in Bologna. In February 2026, Pasqal delivered a 140-qubit neutral atom quantum computer directly integrated with Leonardo — one of the world’s top pre-exascale HPC systems — under the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking with co-funding from MUR. An IQM 54-qubit system is also being installed at CINECA alongside this.
The UK has explicit advantage in this “quantum-classical” convergence because of the strength of its applied AI research labs, and domain expertise in fields including genomics and drug discovery (through the Edinburgh genomics cluster, the UK Biobank, and Google DeepMind); AI-for-Science (Isomorphic Labs, government AI for Science Strategy); and financial services innovation. As a result, the report aims primarily to present recommendations deployable across technologies and at their intersection, rather than “picking winners” within each subfield.
The recently announced €211 million Italian state-aid package for CamGraPhIC, a University of Cambridge spinout, underlines how UK–Italy collaboration can unlock scale and strategic advantage in frontier technologies. The deal channels large, EU-approved public funding into a UK-origin university spinout to industrialise graphene-based photonic transceivers in Italian sites, creating a shared manufacturing base for energy-efficient, high-bandwidth optical interconnects critical to AI and HPC.
It demonstrates that when UK research excellence connects with Italian industrial policy, semiconductor capacity and EU instruments, both countries stand to gain: the UK strengthens its research and spin-out pipeline and access to advanced fabrication, while Italy anchors cutting-edge production and skills on its territory.