Look, this isn't charity. Microsoft's dropping $30 billion on the UK because Starmer's basically promising not to regulate them into the ground like Brussels is doing.
The EU's writing AI laws that'll cost these companies billions just to stay compliant. Britain's response? "Come here, we won't do that shit." It's regulatory arbitrage - plain and simple.
Microsoft says they're splitting the money between infrastructure ($15B for some big-ass supercomputer in Loughton) and hiring people ($15B). But the real play here is political - this is happening right as Trump visits, sending a clear message about whose side Britain's on.
Starmer's selling "light touch regulation" which is politician-speak for "we'll let you do whatever you want." While Brussels writes 500-page AI compliance documents, Britain's saying "just don't be obviously evil and we're cool."
Every tech giant's suddenly discovering they love Britain. Google's building data centers, CoreWeave's expanding, Nvidia's shipping GPUs by the container load. It's like they all got the memo at the same time.
The UK government's calling this the "Tech Prosperity Deal" which sounds like some consultant got paid way too much to come up with that name. Really it's just "we promise not to be the EU."
When Microsoft's Brad Smith talks about "trusted American technology" and "stable regulatory environment," he means "please don't write laws that cost us money." That's it. That's the whole thing.
The success stories coming out are exactly what you'd expect. Vodafone says Copilot's amazing, Barclays is rolling it out everywhere, London Stock Exchange loves GitHub Copilot. Yeah, of course they do - they just signed massive contracts with Microsoft. They're not gonna shit-talk their new vendor.
Here's what's gonna happen: Britain becomes Microsoft and Google's European base, Brussels keeps writing regulations nobody can follow, and in 5 years British politicians will realize they basically gave away their tech sovereignty and start writing their own annoying laws out of spite.
It's a $42 billion bet that post-Brexit Britain will stay bought. Probably a good bet, honestly.