The U.K. government has distributed a number of gifts to the country's technology sector. In his first Autumn Statement Wednesday, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond confirmed the U.K. government would invest an additional 2 billion pounds ($2.48 billion) into technology research and development by the end of the current Parliament in 2020. Some of this money will be allocated to a new Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund that will direct it to priority technologies, including robotics and artificial intelligence. Hammond also flagged further investment into the development of autonomous vehicles, and announced plans to invest 400 million pounds into venture capital via the British Business Bank, in order to stem the sale of promising U.K. startups to foreign buyers. "I am taking a first step to tackle the longstanding problem of our fastest growing technology firms being snapped up by bigger companies, rather than growing to scale," said Hammond.