UK names Kanishka Narayan its first cabinet-level AI minister and dissolves DSIT

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed Kanishka Narayan as the country’s first cabinet-level Minister for Artificial Intelligence on July 20, 2026, according to his UK government profile. The role spans the Cabinet Office and a newly created business ministry.

It is the first cabinet-level AI post in UK history, and it arrives through a wider reorganization. The move dissolves the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, folding its functions into the new Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade under Jonathan Reynolds. The standalone technology secretary role is eliminated.

Narayan is not new to the brief. He served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for AI and Online Safety within the science department from September 2025 to July 2026, overseeing AI opportunities policy, the AI Security Institute, semiconductors and online safety.

The elevation signals how far AI has climbed the UK’s political agenda, giving the technology a dedicated seat at the cabinet table rather than a junior post inside a larger department. With the appointment, the UK joins France and Canada in handing AI its own senior ministerial role.

Placing the job jointly in the Cabinet Office and a business-focused ministry ties AI policy to both the centre of government and the industrial agenda. Whether that structure sharpens coordination or blurs accountability between the two departments will take months of governing to show.