Government as your customer
The Sovereign AI R&D Procurement Scheme is a new route for Britain’s most ambitious AI companies to build novel AI capabilities to solve real challenges set by government.
The Scheme is a core part of our integrated offer to back the UK’s most promising AI companies. It has been designed to help companies establish a direct supplier-customer relationship with public-sector organisations and to develop solutions that address government priorities and deliver public benefit. By becoming an early customer, government can help companies validate their technology in real-world settings and create a pathway to wider commercialisation.
Up to £100 million is available over the lifetime of the scheme for UK-registered startups and SMEs building AI capabilities in the UK. The scheme has been deliberately designed to help innovative startups to participate in public procurement, removing the barriers typically faced.
The scheme is challenge-led, with four launched today and more coming over time. Suppliers retain ownership of their intellectual property and are encouraged to commercialise the capabilities developed through the scheme.
Build systems that unlock NHS productivity at scale, whether automating workflows, coordinating care, or supporting decision-making across services. Reduce cost, free capacity, and improve staff experience while delivering measurable system-wide efficiency gains, aligned to the ambition of the NHS 10 Year Health Plan.
Develop open, secure, and modular-by-design AI capabilities that can operate on platform, in the field, and by dismounted forces in close combat. Defence’s competitive edge is defined by its ability to integrate emerging technologies at speed, with a high tolerance for the rapid employment of low-TRL technologies. Defence operates concurrently from enterprise to edge, across disconnected and distributed environments at every classification, but has critical gaps in edge AI deployment now.
Drive efficiency and effectiveness in public compute infrastructure, to help deliver expansion of the AI Research Resource (AIRR), through trialling and deploying novel hardware or software supporting compute efficiency and heterogeneous systems development.
Produce an evidence-based, operational, and ideally automated risk management approach for CISOs to support risk-based decision-making for specific agents in specific contexts. The risk management approach should include both resilience and cyber security risks. Alternatively, or in addition, develop an evidence-based approach to reducing operational risk of specific agents through architecture, monitoring, and controls, while supporting agentic adoption and innovation at pace. Solutions that support wide-scale adoption, such as those built on open-source frameworks, will be preferred.
AIRR is the UK’s national AI compute capability, powered by the country’s most advanced supercomputers, including Isambard and DAWN. Capability is available to a small number of strategically significant AI companies.
For founders building at the frontier, compute is often a defining constraint. The ability to train models, run experiments, and iterate quickly can determine whether a company leads or falls behind.
Sovereign AI unlocks access to this infrastructure, giving startups the tools they need to build, scale and compete globally.
the AI Research Resource undergo due diligence and are expected to
comply with all applicable laws, including UK copyright law
Strategic Assets
We don’t just invest. We offer what no other VC can. Access to procurement opportunities, funding for AI datasets and lab infrastructure, and levers to turn breakthrough ideas into global companies.
The Strategic Assets Programme is how we fix that. It sits alongside our fund, and provides R&D support for pre-competitive projects that help prospective portfolio companies move faster, go further, and build from here.
Right now we're focused on two types of asset:
• High-quality AI datasets
• Autonomous lab infrastructure
You can build the asset yourself. You can work as part of a consortium with universities, research organisations or other partners. In some cases, others might be best placed to build it. What matters is that the asset gets built, that it's accessible to the founders and firms who need it, and that it makes the UK the best place to scale.
This is part of how we back founders — not just with capital, but by building the infrastructure around you that helps you win.
Competition Guidance
Start building on British infrastructure.
Apply for compute access alongside other programmes in a single submission.
