Technology secretary Liz Kendall has announced the first round of UK firms to be awarded support from the new Sovereign AI Unit.

The Unit is a £500 million national effort to back the UK’s most promising founders, aiming to keep the future of AI in the UK.

The UK needs to have homegrown AI capacity and capabilities to maintain its position and compete on the global stage.

The Sovereign AI Unit aims to leverage the UK’s talent, leading research institutions, and top universities to help shape the AI revolution.

Sovereign AI is designed to be different from any previous government-backed unit, acting like a venture capital fund with the muscle of the state behind it – moving fast, backing ambition and cutting through the red tape that so often holds brilliant ideas back.

It will invest directly in the UK’s most promising AI startups, help them scale quickly, and give them the support they need to compete with the best in the world.

The UK government has announced that Sovereign AI’s first equity investment will be in the AI infrastructure startup Callosum, while 6 further startups will receive access to some of the UK’s foremost supercomputing capacity through the Unit.

Startups backed by Sovereign AI will gain access to support normally reserved for the biggest players in tech, including access to the UK’s top supercomputers with up to one million GPU hours available per startup.

Participating startups will also benefit from faster visa decisions to attract global talent as well as access to 10 cost-free visas.

The government will also provide hands-on support in navigating access to data, early procurement opportunities, and independent product validation and routes to new approaches to regulations.

“We believe in Britain and we are betting on Britain. We are backing our brilliant innovators and entrepreneurs so we seize the benefits of AI to reshape Britain for the benefit of all,” technology secretary Liz Kendall.

“Sovereign AI is unlike anything government has ever done before. Its unique approach will help break down the barriers that have too often held back British enterprise and innovation. This is how we ensure Britain’s economic prosperity and national security in the modern age.

“My message to British founders and innovators is clear – we will ensure you never have to choose between your ambition and your home, because Britain will give you both.”

The first startup getting equity investment from the Sovereign AI Unit is Callosum – a company building a new class of AI infrastructure.

A further 6 startups will receive access to the AI Research Resource (AIRR) supercomputer network – with Sovereign AI getting a right of first refusal on future investments for a number of recipients.

Putting some of the nation’s foremost supercomputing capacity behind some of the country’s most promising new companies tackles a critical hurdle: the need for vast amounts of specialist hardware like GPUs, to train advanced AI models, test ideas and run complex simulations. The companies are: Prima Mente, Cosine, Cursive, Doubleword, Twig Bio and Odyssey.

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Sovereign AI is also currently in discussions with around 30 firms, over potential AIRR access.

And as part of Sovereign AI’s £282 million offer to support cutting edge AI startups with R&D, the Unit is launching its first funding call to create new datasets and other assets that help firms move faster and build in the UK.

Sovereign AI will work with the Government’s Global Talent Taskforce to attract top researchers, while also ensuring the benefits of AI are felt across the whole country. In May, the unit will begin a tour of UK cities to ensure that people from all communities and walks of life feel the benefits that AI promises to deliver.

“There’s a fundamental shift underway in how AI systems are built and run. The future of compute is heterogeneous, and making that complexity usable is the next frontier,” Danyal Akarca, Founder of Callosum, said.

“The UK already understands where this is heading, and with its depth of talent across universities and labs like DeepMind, it is the natural place to build Callosum: the orchestration platform that allows models and chips to work together as one system.