How are West Midlands businesses embracing AI?

With almost 70,000 people working in the AI industry in the West Midlands, and leaders promising more jobs and growth, how are organisations using it to their advantage?

There are more than 140 AI companies in the region, according to the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), which is encouraging more firms to embrace the technology.

Its recent AI and Tech Prospectus set out three missions for the region - to be a nationally recognised AI testbed for public service innovation, to drive business productivity and implement an AI academy offering free training for adults.

Andy Hague, lead of TechWM, who worked on the prospectus, said: "I get very bored of 'AI is going to replace 99% of all jobs in eight years'. It's just not, but it's very easy to be freaked out."

While firms start to use more AI-related tools, Hague, who became the lead of TechWM in April, said a fundamental building block was to increase people's overall awareness of what it is and what it can do for them.

"I'm still convinced, a vast number, and it's probably well over 70% of the general population, can not in any way articulate to you what what it [AI] is, or what it might do or how it can impact their life," he said.

He added: "If you're running a small business and you're making widgets, you don't understand the impact that AI, cyber or quantum can have, you just do widgets and [think] 'that's nothing to do with me'.

"The real focus needs to be if you're a business, and no matter what size you are, how can you embrace it... just to make yourself a little bit better - to polish your processes, speed things up, cut out areas of potential human error, stop duplication."

Working with businesses, academia and the public sector, Tech WM will feed back to the WMCA to help make the missions happen, Hague said.

The body is partlyfunded by the local authority to drive "the digital tech agenda", while aiming to attract private equity and investment into the region.

For any business looking for guidance, the West Midlands Cyber Hub opened in Millennium Point, in Birmingham, at the end of November as "a place that anyone can go to to ask a question or see what's going on", he said.

Several AI and cyber faculties also opened in the region in 2025 with the hope of making the West Midlands highly competitive and a leader in skills training.

The Centre for Cyber Resilience and Artificial Intelligence (CYBRAI) at the University of Wolverhampton opened in early 2025 and Aston University's Capgemini AI Centre for Excellence also recently launched at its London campus.

"I interact quite heavily with Wolverhampton, Warwick, Aston and Birmingham and they're all they're all doing great stuff," Hague said.

Predicting AI will become a core skill like maths and English, an ambitious £10m strategy has been recently announced by mayor Richard Parker and the WMCA aiming to offer free training, create jobs and secure investment.

Manny Athwal, chief executive and founder of the recently opened School of Coding & AI in Birmingham and Wolverhampton, said he believed tech-education in all subjects was now vital and the region needed to work together more to get ahead of cities like Manchester.

The school opened a city centre campus earlier this year in partnership with the University of Wolverhampton, offering computer science, business management, and health and social care courses with AI "across the curriculum".

It aims to arm students with practical experience of using AI, how to challenge it, use data and analytics tools and importantly, learn how to work alongside AI and not be replaced by it.

Students are also taught when to use AI and how to validate what they get from it.

Encouraging more mature people to learn about it was crucial, Athwal added, and he called for industry "not leave it to the next generation".

Shakielah Bibi, 41, from Birmingham, who is in her first year of ahealth and social care foundation course with Wolverhampton University at the school, said learning about AI had "opened doors for her".

The mother-of-three said she wanted to develop her learning after turning 40 and being a "mum and homemaker for so long" after previously working in education.

She said she had learnt to use AI with her research which had saved time and also used VR headsets for scenario-based simulations.

"As my children got older.. I feel I could help them more if I'm on the same wavelength with the technology and AI we have," she said.

"It's something I never thought I'd be able to do."

Fellow health and social care student and former nurse Christianah Abayomi-Daniel said she had enjoyed applying it to her studies and "day-to-day life", adding that if it had not been part of her course she may have given it up.

"In 2011 when I was at university.. I have to go to the library all day to be sourcing for different books, but now I know about AI, I don't have to leave my house. I just have to know how to talk to my AI," she said.

Hague said it was a "fascinating time" for the region as the sector grew and the "bubble" element around AI calmed down.

While compared to other areas, he estimated "on pure outputs" it ranked "pretty low, but it is very well regarded", largely as things were still in their infancy.

However, the future was exciting, he said, given the WMCA targets around jobs and growth.

Atwal said he wanted the region to become less fragmented and that more money was needed from government to change that, which he was confident would happen.

But, he added if "somebody else gets that money before us, they will take the crown".

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