Sovereign AI. Launching Tonight. 🇬🇧

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.

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.

You can find more details about how to apply here: sovereignai.gov.uk/compute-s…

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

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 🇬🇧

A massive congratulations to @CallosumAI on raising a $100m seed round. Callosum was our first investment. We backed @achterbrain, @DanAkarca and the team because they’re building a foundational piece of the next generation of AI infrastructure. It’s brilliant to see that conviction shared by leading investors.