The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with OpenAI to provide government employees with access to ChatGPT Enterprise. The MoU includes UK data residency for customers using the OpenAI API platform, ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu.
OpenAI technology is used by the UK government to power artificial intelligence (AI) in several tools, including the Whitehall AI Assistant, HumphreyThe purpose of the law was to ease the administrative burden on civil servants.
OpenAI is also supported by the government Consult A tool that supports the policy development process by automatically sorting responses to public consultations. This task usually takes officials weeks, but can now be completed in minutes, leaving important decisions to experts.
The agreement supports the Ministry of Justice's AI in Justice Action Plan and will provide 2,500 employees with access to ChatGPT Enterprise. It follows a successful pilot that demonstrated time-saving benefits across a range of routine tasks, including writing support, compliance and legal work, data and research processes, and document analysis.
Given the current geopolitical climate, IT leaders in both the public and private sectors are rethinking how to maintain digital sovereignty. This has led to the introduction of geographically isolated availability zones from hyperscale cloud providers.
However, given that these businesses are predominantly headquartered in the US, there is a risk that under the US CLOUD Act, legislators will have a legal way to access data stored outside the US. A more serious potential risk is that a foreign government will deny access to services provided by a US-headquartered software provider. As a result, there are plans to develop sovereign artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure in Europe.
Commenting on the Memorandum of Understanding, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said: “Our partnership with OpenAI places the UK firmly at the forefront of the global technology revolution, leading the world in innovation and using technology to bring equity and opportunity to every corner of the UK.”
OpenAI said the MoU with the UK government includes a focus on expanding the UK's sovereign capabilities in artificial intelligence.
Following Stargate UK's AI infrastructure partnership with Nvidia and Nscale, which was signed in September 2025 to coincide with US President Donald Trump's state visit, OpenAI is now introducing UK data residency, which it says will give UK customers and developers the ability to store their data in the UK. to help meet local data protection preferences or requirements. The Department of Justice will be the first to take up this offer under the MoU.
Nscale startup headquartered in the UK is one of the companies with strong ties with UK government plans to expand artificial intelligence. Last month the company announced it had partnered with Microsoft to deliver the UK's largest artificial intelligence supercomputer at Nscale's AI Campus in Loughton. The site, which will go online in 2027, will initially host 23,040 Nvidia GB300 graphics processing units (GPUs) for Microsoft UK's Azure public cloud service.
Stargate UK's Open AI initiative also uses Nscale's infrastructure, which will go live in the first quarter of 2026. It can eventually scale to 31,000 Nvidia GPUs.
“The number of people using our products in the UK has quadrupled over the past year,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. “It's great to see how they're using AI to save time, increase productivity and achieve more. Civil servants are using ChatGPT to improve public services, and established firms are rethinking how they operate. We're proud to continue to support the UK and Government's AI agenda.”
