The High Potential Individual visa allows skilled graduates to live and work without a job offer, provided they have received a qualification from an eligible university within the last five years.
The United Kingdom has realized that it must act quickly to remain competitive in the global AI race. The government intends to reform its immigration system to attract graduates from the world’s best AI universities.
The AI Opportunities Action Plan, written by tech entrepreneur Matt Clifford, and released on January 13, 2025, suggests improving UK immigration policies to bring in top AI graduates without many restrictions for foreign skilled workers.
Right now, graduates from leading AI institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Carnegie Mellon University in the US do not qualify for the UK’s High Potential Individual (HPI) visa. The plan proposes adding new pathways or improving existing ones to allow these graduates to come to the UK.
The HPI visa lets skilled graduates live and work in the UK without needing a job offer. To apply, you must have been awarded a qualification by an eligible university in the last 5 years. It lasts for two years or three years for PhD holders. However, under the current rules, they cannot be extended. Instead, visa holders need to switch to other visas, like the Skilled Worker visa, to stay longer.
As of now, the UK has a list of over 40 top universities whose graduates are eligible for the HPI visa. This includes universities like the University of Melbourne and Fudan University in China. However, no Indian universities are currently on this list. The list is dominated by universities from the United States.
If the proposals go through, graduates from the Indian Institutes of Technology can live and work in the UK to pursue their AI ventures.
The report also highlights other challenges, such as high visa costs and complex application processes, which discourage startups and talented foreign workers from moving to the UK.
In 2022, 46,000 students completed AI-related degrees in the UK—the highest in Europe. Germany was second with 32,000 AI graduates. But when adjusted for population size, the UK is behind countries like Finland. The UK still faces a shortage of AI professionals.
The UK is home to big AI companies like Google DeepMind, ARM, and Wayve and is the third-largest AI market in the world. Despite its history of major tech breakthroughs (such as Alan Turing’s algorithms and Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web), the UK risks falling behind the US and China in AI advancements.
To stay competitive, the report suggests setting up a new AI organization called UK Sovereign AI, which would work with private companies to strengthen the UK’s position in frontier AI development.
Meanwhile, the rise of DeepSeek, a major AI project from China, is shaking up the global AI industry, especially in the United States. If the UK does not act quickly, it could be left behind in the AI race.