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Locai Labs
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Locai Labs

UK sovereign-AI startup building foundation models, chaired by Lord Drayson.

Locai Labs is a British foundation-model startup founded by James and George Drayson, chaired by their father Lord Drayson. It launched its L1-Large model in November 2025 and appeared at Civo's sovereignty conference on 22 September 2026.

Last refreshed: 22 September 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic

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Background

Locai Labs is a UK company building its own foundation language models, positioned as a British-owned alternative to US and Chinese large language models. It was incorporated on 12 July 2022 and is registered in Oxford; its founders are James Drayson, chief executive, and George Drayson, chief AI officer, with their father Lord (Paul) Drayson, a former UK defence procurement minister, as chairman.

The company launched its L1-Large model publicly in November 2025. Its UK ownership and chairmanship made it a natural fit for the sovereignty theme of Civo's Navigate London conference on 22 September 2026 , where it appeared in the mentioned tier rather than as a speaker or sponsor.

Common Questions
What does Locai Labs do?
Locai Labs builds its own foundation language models as a UK-owned alternative to US and Chinese large language models.
Who chairs Locai Labs?
Lord (Paul) Drayson, a former UK defence procurement minister, chairs Locai Labs.
Source Material
Locai Labs Limited - Company ProfileLocai Labs launches the UK's first foundational LLM to rival GPT-5 and Claude