UK Invests £30M in SOFAIR Lab for Transparent, Efficient Foundation Models
ai_ucl · x · 2026-08-29
The SOFAIR (Science of Fundamental AI Research) Lab, a collaboration between UCL, Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh led by Prof. David Barber, has received £30M — the largest-ever government investment in a UK university AI lab.
The backdrop: most frontier models are developed outside the UK using ever-increasing compute with little exploration of alternative architectures. SOFAIR will combine Statistics, Mathematics, Neuroscience and Computer Science to develop transparent, efficient and trustworthy foundation models, on the premise that AI is now critical national infrastructure.
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