EPSRC

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council launched two new AI research labs on 23 June 2026 and doubled its AI programme to £60m. SOFAIR, at University College London and led by Professor David Barber with Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh as partners, will develop open-source AI that runs on commodity hardware. BOLD, at Oxford and led by Professor Jakob Foerster with UCL and Imperial as partners, will work on new learning algorithms and embodied AI. Each lab starts with around £8m plus £2m for at least ten doctoral students, with an autumn 2026 review deciding further tranches. AI Minister Kanishka Narayan announced the launch.

EPSRC is the UK's largest research council by budget and has been the principal public funder of engineering, physical sciences, mathematics and doctoral training since 1994. It became one of nine constituent councils of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in 2018, working alongside sibling councils such as the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council on the pre-commercial research that underpins later commercial spinouts.

The SOFAIR and BOLD labs sit alongside BBSRC's £10m cohort of regional research fellows, announced five days earlier. Both are part of a wider government push, alongside the Sovereign AI Unit and Innovate UK's portfolio model, to build UK-owned AI research capacity rather than importing results developed abroad. The autumn 2026 review of the remaining £52m is the near-term test of whether that ambition converts into sustained funding or a one-off launch.