University College London launches £30 million national AI research lab

New facility will be dedicated to developing innovative, open-source AI systems and will help to secure the UK’s position as a global leader The new £30 million national AI research lab was launched with a roundtable discussion Leading AI researchers and entrepreneurs have officially opened the new £30 million national AI research lab dedicated to developing innovative, open-source AI systems. The new Science of Fundamental AI Research (SOFAIR) Lab will be led by University College London (UCL), with partners Cambridge, Oxford, and Edinburgh universities, and will help to secure the UK’s position as a global leader in artificial intelligence. The SOFAIR lab is part of a £60 million scheme funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to create two UK labs dedicated to rethinking how AI works, learns and can be made more open, efficient and useful. Professor David Barber (UCL Computer Science) will lead the lab and opened the launch event with a talk highlighting the lab’s vision to build future generations of AI technologies based in the UK, and reduce the UK’s dependence on large technology providers and remote data-centre infrastructure. He said: “The £30 million investment over the next six years is a massive opportunity for us to really do fantastic, deep, fundamental research in AI and come up with new paradigms that can move the needle of AI forward.” As part of the launch Professor Geraint Rees, UCL Vice-Provost (Research, Innovation & Global Engagement), held a roundtable discussion with Professor David Barber and Professor Michael Wooldridge from Oxford University highlighting the role the UK can play in AI including the potential challenges and opportunities. Rees said: “This is an important step for the UK’s AI ecosystem. Much of the public conversation around AI is focused on products, adoption and economic impact. “But SOFAIR reminds us that progress also depends on fundamental research, understanding how those systems work, where their limits lie, and what sort of scientific ideas are going to drive the next generation of advances in sovereign AI.” Next generation technologies The SOFAIR Lab will focus on developing next generation open-source AI technologies that are more widely accessible. Its aim will be to expand and diversify the underlying technology and systems that AI runs on, as modern AI relies heavily on a small number of popular architectures trained on vast data, requiring immense computing infrastructure. The lab will bring together researchers from across computer science, mathematics, statistics and neuroscience to explore new AI architectures and those designed to run on widely available hardware. This will mean cutting-edge AI will be more widely accessible, including for researchers and institutions. SOFAIR’s counterpart, the British Open-ended Learning and Discovery (BOLD) Lab, will be led by the University of Oxford, with involvement from UCL and Imperial College London. It aims to fundamentally rethink how AI systems learn and will develop systems capable of working alongside humans, navigating physical environments and operating without vast centralised computing power. The two labs will build and expand partnerships across academia, industry and the public sector, helping translate fundamental advances into real-world impact. In addition, they will actively support the commercialisation of the research with targeted support for entrepreneurship and spinouts. Each lab will initially receive £8 million, with further funding available following an assessment in autumn 2026. It is the first major investment under UKRI’s AI Strategy, which sets out an ambitious vision for fundamental AI research that works for the UK economy and society.