Backing Britain's AI Founders to start here, scale here, and win everywhere
United Kingdom
Joined March 2026
- Tweets136
- Following73
- Followers10K
- Likes180
We’ve already backed some of the most ambitious AI companies being built in Britain.
From AI infrastructure and safety to science and new technologies, our portfolio spans some of the most exciting areas of AI, all with ambitious founders building from the UK.
Let’s hear from a few of the companies we’ve backed so far.
@CallosumAI | Augur | @Basecamp_Res
We’re announcing £1.57m of support for IMU Biosciences to help build a new population-scale immune dataset, in collaboration with UK Biobank.
This is the first award through Sovereign AI’s Strategic Assets Programme - designed to create datasets, infrastructure and capabilities that can unlock opportunities for a much wider group of British companies and researchers.
IMU’s wider project will profile 80,000 blood samples, creating a detailed new layer of immune data alongside UK Biobank’s existing genomic, clinical and lifestyle data.
Read the full story on the blog 👇
We’re delighted to announce our investment in Augur.
Augur is building technology that can help security teams find information faster and respond sooner, with applications across public safety, serious crime and critical infrastructure.
Augur is already working on capability to prevent attacks by hostile states on Britain’s critical national infrastructure. They’re also partnering with @TfL to help identify and detect sexual offending on the transport network, behaviours that disproportionally impact women and girls.
We’re excited about the potential to help keep people safer, give investigators valuable time back, and spot threats before they become more serious. The Augur team is tackling an incredibly important problem and building the solution here in Britain.
Read our blog below for more information on Augur’s technology.
ALT Sovereign AI and Augur logos
Our next round of compute applications is open.
Through the AI Research Resource (AIRR), successful applicants can access up to 1 million GPU hours on Isambard-AI, alongside cloud compute, to train models, accelerate research and scale breakthrough technologies.
If you’re building an ambitious AI company in the UK and in need of compute, apply below 👇
There’s a lot happening with AI in Northern Ireland. We wanted to see it for ourselves.
Last night, we brought together around 100 founders, investors, ecosystem leaders and technology businesses at Catalyst to talk about what’s being built here and how more startups can scale from Northern Ireland into global markets.
Northern Ireland now has 400 firms commercially engaged with AI, more than double the number a year ago. Belfast is the centre of that ecosystem, with 87% of Northern Ireland’s AI-related jobs based here.
That’s exactly why Belfast was such an important stop on our UK tour. Over the past six months, we’ve visited Scotland, Wales, England, and now Northern Ireland. We set out to understand where the strongest founders are, what they’re building and where Sovereign AI can genuinely help.
Thanks again to everyone who joined us. Belfast was a brilliant stop on the UK tour.
We’ve invested in @Basecamp_Res as part of its $140m round.
Basecamp has built a database of genetic information from 1m+ unstudied organisms, using it to design new medicines, including cancer and autoimmune therapies.
The potential to transform medicine discovery is huge.
Sovereign AI retweeted
Since its launch two weeks ago, over 700 British companies have applied to the @UKSovereignAI procurement scheme - a scheme we designed to remove as many of the blockers start-ups face when bidding on Government contracts as possible.
To get a sense of the interest we have had, we hit the hard cap of 1000 attendees for the launch webinar - Brits want to build!
Responses on eligibility will be sent out this week, and invites to bid on the challenges covering AI security, compute efficiency and better health services, will arrive soon too.
Of course we are still a very small team at SovAI, and we only have 4 bids open ( but hope to have many more live by end of year! ), so naturally we will have to turn many applicants down. I know this will be disappointing, our decision making will not be perfect and it's a difficult process, thank you to everyone for bidding.
And as a reminder, I personally do not see any applications and have no role in the decision process, that is led by our expert IC and mission champions, so while I appreciate the many reach-outs I really can do nothing to help specific companies.
SovAI are working with other Departments to share what we've learned from this process to fix our procurement system, and will be launching more requests for cheaper, better and more innovative services for Government in the coming months.
We’re changing government procurement and making it easier for British AI startups to work with government.
Our challenge based R&D Procurement Scheme is LIVE with the first challenges coming from @ARIA_research, @DefenceHQ, @NCSC and @DHSCgovuk .
We’re creating new opportunities for British startups to build and test technology against real-world problems while delivering public benefit.
With up to £100m available, this is a new way of working with government.
Watch to find out more.
Government as your customer.
Our Sovereign AI R&D Procurement Scheme, a new route for ambitious British AI companies to work directly with government to tackle real-world challenges and deliver public benefit, is now LIVE.
We’re taking a different approach to government procurement, creating opportunities for startups that traditional routes can often make difficult to access.
We’ve designed this scheme around the realities of building a startup.
That means no minimum turnover, net asset or cash reserve requirements, a streamlined application process, companies retaining their IP, and upfront payments available where needed to help cash-constrained startups participate.
With up to £100m available, companies can work directly with public-sector users to build against real challenges, prove their technology and create a pathway to commercial scale.
Government gets innovative solutions to real challenges. British AI companies get a customer and a pathway to scale.
And these are just the first challenges.
Applications OPEN.
You can find more details about how to apply here: sovereignai.gov.uk/compute-s…
You can find more details about how to apply here: sovereignai.gov.uk/compute-s…
“Lock in and go for it.”
On the back of @CallosumAI $100m Seed we’re resharing the podcast we recorded with Co-Founder, @DanAkarca, and one of our investors, Will Bushby.
If you want to learn more about what @CallosumAI are building this is a great place to start. There’s also advice for founders starting their own thing or for people wanting to work at a startup.
Sovereign AI retweeted
FULL INTERVIEW: I sat down with @DanAkarca to announce the 100m Seed.
Dan is a generational founder building for a future of AI that is inevitable. They are building the software layer that lets AI workloads run across a mix of different models and chips
Today they've announced a $100m seed led by atomico, backed by @pluralplatform (@soundboy), @DCVC, @UKSovereignAI (@jameswise, @suzanneashman)
Here's the full interview:
0:00 - Introduction
1:09 - Callosum's approach to AI infrastructure
5:56 - How Callosum's technology works for customers
8:48 - Callosum's new $100m round
12:33 - How Callosum built partnerships with chip companies like Cerebras
17:14 - Why Callosum wasn't built just to make chips work together
20:03 - What the $100m will fund next
24:54 - Why cost is becoming as important as speed for AI buyers
28:03 - Who Danyal thinks will win the AI stack over the next three years
33:03 - Why London has become a serious AI hub
Huge congrats to the @CallosumAI team, @DanAkarca @achterbrain
Today we announce our $100M seed round to redefine how humanity computes in AI's next chapter.
The future of compute and AI is heterogeneous. Callosum is building it:
callosum.com/blog/seed-round
Sovereign AI retweeted
Britain is building the future of chips, the foundation for modern AI, an ambition shared by the @CallosumAI team.
Congratulations to @DanAkarca, @achterbrain and team on a major milestone, backed by @UKSovereignAI 🇬🇧
Today we announce our $100M seed round to redefine how humanity computes in AI's next chapter.
The future of compute and AI is heterogeneous. Callosum is building it:
callosum.com/blog/seed-round