Stargate Project Announcement

What are the implications for Fintech?

Alex Speedie

January 28, 2025

The Stargate Project is a new company which is planning to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the USA, with $100 billion to be deployed immediately, where the initial equity funders are to be SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. Along with that, Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners. The buildout is currently underway, starting in Texas and the plan is for new sites after that.

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At the same time, with Deepseek in China also now showing it can match the capabilities of any of the current American solutions, with a fraction of the computing power, this suggests that actually, with the right AI strategy, even a smaller country like the UK can compete with the global leaders, if the investment into R&D is correct. Hence the proposed investment to build IT infrastructure by the UK is well timed. For example, Vantage Data Centres, Nscale and Kyndryl – have committed to £14 billion investment in the UK to build IT infrastructure, which will be along side the various Government initiatives being launched.

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With the AI race now in full swing, as mentioned in our piece last week, the UK remains well placed to capitalise, as it remains one of the leading places getting funding, with new start ups raising more in 2024 than the prior year and the direction of travel being upwards. With that, what are the implications for Fintech?

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In the first instance, the fact that UK Fintech continues to be one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK, overall, the number of people employed is likely to increase, equally this is unlikely to be an even distribution. Some departments will expand faster than others, and there may be certain areas that are made redundant.

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Starting with the bad news first, it is the procedural positions which are rules based, which are the easiest to automate, hence junior finance, underwriting and compliance roles are most at risk. Equally the fintechs have not had to scale these types of roles in the way that Banks have had to, hence what is most likely to happen is that whilst in Banking, these jobs become shed, the Fintech’s by being more nimble, increasingly are able to match the output of the established banks, with a fraction of the headcount. This is very much a worst case outcome for the Banks, but becoming increasingly likely. As a result, our estimate is that the proportion of people within financial services working within fintech will rise, not just as the sector grows, but due to Ai from being 7% of the total currently, to potentially 15% or more over the current decade.

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Areas likely to remain flat are complex roles which are non predictable, such as senior lawyers or project management positions. These are likely to scale in a linear way in relation to the underlying revenues of the businesses in the sector. Where however we expect the explosive growth is likely to be in sales related roles. There is right now a race amongst thousands of companies worldwide, which have developed variants of AI, which are being applied to solutions and products, where there will be a race for revenue and marketshare, where if the AI sector follows the rules of others, there will be a process of consolidation, where income growth will be all important, when determining which solutions survive.

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Senior sales people are already amongst the biggest demand area and with this AI race, we only expect this to continue and given this growth, this means that as long as someone has a demonstrable track record in sales, they don’t need sector experience necessarily. This shift opens doors for skilled professionals to join some of the UK’s fastest-growing and most innovative companies.

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If your New Year’s resolution includes exploring new opportunities, now is the time to act. Our clients offer competitive salaries and dynamic environments where your expertise can drive meaningful impact. Contact us to learn how you can take the next step in your career. Or if you are a hiring manager looking for support with sourcing high calibre candidates, get in touch!

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Stargate Project Announcement

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