Innovate UK has announced the Frontier AI Discovery call, with Phase 1 offering funding from £25,000 to £50,000 for projects of up to three months. The call aims to advance the development of frontier Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and foundation models in the UK. This competition has 2 phases, and the second phase will be available to successful applications from Phase 1. This first stage is for single institution applications that will assess the feasibility of ambitious collaborative R&D proposals and help build consortia for Phase 2.

This call has four specific themes and proposals must clearly articulate which theme they are addressing:

• Theme 1: AI Enabled Health and Life Sciences: making the UK the best place to develop and deploy AI for drug discovery, development and manufacturing of medicines, clinical trials and healthcare delivery.
• Theme 2: Advanced Materials with AI: building a world leading AI-first materials R&D capability, including applications in aerospace, net zero technologies, defence and semiconductors.
• Theme 3: Secure AI for National Security and Defence (NS&D). Enable the UK’s defence sector to become a leading integrator of secure AI-enhanced command and control and AI enabled sensors.
• Theme 4: Fundamental AI. Advancing foundation model AI capabilities that can underpin multiple sectors and future applications.

For further details, including priorities under each of the themes, please see the call pages.

University Internal selection: