UK Opens £100M Sovereign AI Contest, Founders Keep IP

The UK government has opened a £100 million competition to buy AI from British startups, and the companies get to keep the intellectual property they create.

Chancellor John Healey MP announced the Sovereign AI R&D Procurement Scheme at the G20 Finance Ministers meeting in North Carolina, per the gov.uk release. The first four contests target NHS productivity, AI compute efficiency, defence mission environments, and agent security and resilience testing.

"When we said that Sovereign AI would put the heft of a nation behind Britain's AI founders, we meant it," said AI Minister Kanishka Narayan MP.

Two elements set the scheme apart from usual Whitehall contracts. On IP: "Successful companies will also keep the intellectual property they create, allowing them to take those innovations beyond the pilot stage," the release says. On cash: it offers "upfront payments available where appropriate, giving more British founders the early-stage funding they need."

Applications will be judged by the Sovereign AI team, participating departments — HM Treasury, Cabinet Office, DHSC, DBIST, MoD and the National Cyber Security Centre — and independent technical experts. The announcement does not publish per-challenge budgets, opening or closing dates, or how many winners are expected in each of the four contests.

It joins recent government AI moves like the EU's designation of ChatGPT as a Very Large Search Engine under DSA and Commerce's draft rule to close China's remote AI-chip access.