SAS delivering major investment in AI across the UK

SAS, the leader in data and AI, is making significant investments in AI across the UK through its partnership with the UK government’s skills initiative, an expected investment in its Glasgow R&D Centre of more than £20m, and partnerships with universities and other organisations to improve access to its AI software.

Since its origins 50 years ago, SAS has always held a strong belief that development of skills is essential to thriving economies and it has long championed AI and data skills development in the UK through its evolving initiatives and partnerships.

UK Government AI Skills Programme

The UK Government has announced plans for a major expansion of its AI upskilling programme to impact 10 million workers by 2030. Every adult in the UK is eligible to take free, newly benchmarked courses to gain practical AI skills for work.

SAS is one of the founding partners making educational courses available for free, along with Accenture, Amazon, Barclays, BT, Google, IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, Sage and Salesforce. A number of new partners have also joined the programme, including British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), Cisco, Cognizant, Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Department for Education (DfE) and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The UK is setting ambitious targets to ensure the workforce is adequately skilled, confident and ready to grasp the full opportunities of AI. This could create more higher-skilled jobs and free workers up from routine tasks, with increasing the adoption of AI potentially unlocking up to £140 billion in annual economic output.

A selection of industry-developed AI courses, newly available on the government’s AI Skills Hub, have been checked against Skills England’s AI foundation skills for work benchmark, with those who complete these courses receiving a virtual AI foundations badge.

UK Government and SAS Apprentice AI Skills Initiative

The UK Government, leading industry partners, and SAS are working together to provide apprentices free access to the skills that employers are actively looking for in data, analytics, and AI.

SAS is offering apprentices across the UK free access to its academic software and learning resources through SAS Skill Builder for Students. They will benefit from hands-on experience with real analytics and AI tools, guided learning content, and practical skills that can be used straight away.

Investment in Glasgow R&D Centre

SAS R&D executes across three global centres in the UK, US and India. 

The UK site in Glasgow has benefited from significant investment, and the team has more than doubled in size since 2021, with plans to reach 250 positions in 2026.  This year SAS expects to invest more than £20million in the centre.

The centre has pioneered AI solutions to address client issues relating to areas such as fraud, risk, compliance, customer intelligence, and data management.

Partnerships with UK universities

SAS is taught at 120 universities across the UK, with 65 of them, including all the Russell Group, having dedicated SAS access for ground-breaking research and innovation.

For example, SAS is involved in The MONARCH study, a partnership between Northumbria University and Services charity partners, which captures data from a variety of sources to build a single, anonymised dataset to better understand the unique needs of military personnel, veterans and their families. SAS is also used to better identify kidneys that can be used in transplants through PITHIA.ai, saving lives and improving quality of life for recipients.

It has also partnered with the University of Cambridge’s Maxwell Centre, to drive healthcare innovation through its Advanced Analytics Hub, embedding AI expertise to support researchers and startups. A similar partnership exists with the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre where researchers, students and businesses work side by side to turn AI and data science into practical, impactful solutions for society and industry.

Future Analysts Programme

Through its Future Analysts programme with The Talent Foundry, SAS equips young people in disadvantaged areas with hands-on AI software skills and digital badges, while in March 2021, it launched its successful SAS STEP programme, a free reskilling and employment initiative to empower the UK and Ireland’s workforce with data skills to rebuild from the pandemic. The programme was then used to support SAS delivery of data literacy learning pathways around the world.

Partnership with Commonwealth AI Consortium

SAS has also partnered the Commonwealth AI Consortium with a donation of £8m for training and access to AI software and computing capacity to support 10,000 higher education students and educators.

They will have free access to SAS^® Viya^® for Learners and the digital learning environments SAS Skill Builder for Students and the SAS Educator Portal. These platforms offer digital courses, certification programs, and hands-on learning opportunities designed to build and validate analytics and AI skills.

Why this investment is important

Glyn Townsend, Senior Director of Education Services at SAS EMEA, said: “We are at a critical juncture in upskilling the current workforce in AI, with many more generations in work, due to extended life expectancy and working age increase, whilst the technological advancements we are seeing are happening at unprecedented speed. These skills should be treated like other vital infrastructure, such as roads, schools and hospitals. SAS is therefore fully committed to making foundational educational content in data and AI available for free – and not just to the existing workforce, but also university students and apprentices.

“We already partner with more than 60 academic institutions across the UK and will also be offering apprentices across the UK free access to our academic software and learning resources through SAS Skill Builder for Students – something I’m particularly excited about having joined the technology sector as a Modern Apprentice 30 years ago! SAS is already a critical partner for AI transformation across major government departments as well as a number of the government’s key growth areas, including health and life sciences, energy and financial services.”

Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology, Liz Kendall, said: “We’re on a mission to make sure British workers have the skills and confidence to thrive in the AI era.

“This announcement from SAS is welcome. It will help open up access to AI software and create new opportunities for communities across the country, especially in Glasgow – a city with a proud industrial heritage now at the forefront of the technological revolution.

“It’s yet more evidence our world-leading AI sector continues to attract investment – the kind that fuels growth and supports the UK’s national renewal.”