Quantexa wins £175m HMRC contract

Quantexa said on May 14 that HM Revenue and Customs had awarded it a 10-year, £175 million contract to modernise the UK tax authority’s data foundation and support the use of governed artificial intelligence across core operations. The London-based software company said the programme would connect fragmented data, improve how HMRC identifies tax at risk and support wider efforts to improve service for taxpayers. HMRC has not, in material reviewed by Reuters-style public sources, published a same-day standalone release carrying the full contract announcement, but multiple reports on May 14 described the award and Quantexa published details through GlobeNewswire. The deal is notable because it is both long in duration and tied to a broader HMRC infrastructure overhaul already under way. HMRC said in a 2025 procurement notice for hyperscaler services that its IT estate carried growing technical debt and that its Data Centre Exit programme aims to move services out of three managed data centres by June 2028. That notice described cloud migration as part of HMRC’s wider modernisation strategy. (markets.financialcontent.com) ### What exactly is Quantexa being paid to build? Quantexa said the contract covers a “sovereign, governed AI” deployment built on a modernised data foundation for HMRC. The company said the programme will give the tax authority a more connected view of its data, improve performance, help identify tax at risk and strengthen operational controls. (find-tender.service.gov.uk) Aol, citing the announcement on May 14, reported that Quantexa’s systems will combine HMRC data with external sources to help the department spot fraud and correct unintentional tax return errors more quickly. That report also said the tools would support customer service staff and help identify hidden networks of companies and individuals. (markets.financialcontent.com) ### How does this fit into HMRC’s existing technology programme? HMRC said in the 2025 Data Centre Exit procurement that ageing hardware and software had made modernisation a priority for the department. The notice said the programme’s objective is to remove services from three managed data centres and decommission remaining infrastructure within the incumbent hosting contract period, which runs to June 2028. (aol.com) The same procurement said HMRC viewed modern hyperscaler cloud technologies as the preferred route for transition, provided the migration could be completed without disrupting business continuity or creating what it called an unaffordable cost of change. That places the Quantexa award inside a larger, already documented effort to rebuild core systems rather than as a stand-alone AI pilot. (find-tender.service.gov.uk) ### Why is Quantexa already expanding in Dublin? Quantexa said on May 7 that it had opened a new Dublin office at 5 George’s Dock in the city’s International Financial Services Centre. The company said the site would house data scientists, researchers and engineers and would focus on AI, machine learning, knowledge graphs, intelligent agents and large language models. (find-tender.service.gov.uk) Peter Burke, Ireland’s minister for enterprise, tourism and employment, said the Dublin investment would support highly skilled jobs and deepen Ireland’s role in AI and data analytics. Quantexa said the centre would also work with universities and research institutions and help clients and partners co-develop sector-specific AI tools. (quantexa.com) ### What does Quantexa say HMRC wants from the programme? Vishal Marria, Quantexa’s founder and chief executive, said governments are trying to turn fragmented data into faster and more confident decisions. In the company statement, he said the HMRC programme would embed “trusted, governed AI” and serve as “a blueprint” for government deployment of AI at scale. That characterisation comes from Quantexa, not from an independently published HMRC policy paper tied to the award. (quantexa.com) HMRC has worked with Quantexa before on fraud-related technology. A 2023 government release said Quantexa had been awarded work to help recover fraud against the public purse, and a later government update said an AI tool developed through a £4 million partnership signed in January 2023 helped a counter-fraud team save taxpayers £311 million in its first 12 months. (markets.financialcontent.com) ### What comes next in the timeline? June 2028 is the key date in HMRC’s published infrastructure timetable because that is the target point for exiting the three managed data centres identified in the Data Centre Exit programme. Quantexa’s contract runs for 10 years from the May 2026 announcement, while the company’s Dublin R&D centre is already open and recruiting the engineers and researchers it said will build next-generation AI and decision intelligence capabilities. (gov.uk) (find-tender.service.gov.uk)