UK’s ARIA joins CommonAI with €18 million grant to strengthen AI compute delivery
CommonAI has announced the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) as its newest member, supported by an initial €18 million (£16 million) grant (part of a total €57 million (£50 million) commitment) that will focus on developing the UK’s scaling inference capability.
The platform was originally launched by Anthemis and Cambridge AI Venture Partners to support the growth of AI-enabled businesses across the UK and Europe.
Dr Gavin Ferris, CEO, CommonAI CIC, says: “CommonAI is focused on delivery, building shared infrastructure that organisations can use to run and improve AI systems in real conditions. Scaling Inference brings partners from industry, academia and the public sector together around working clusters, open benchmarks, and measurable progress. By creating shared infrastructure that organisations can build on, it supports emerging companies, reduces development risk and helps attract investment into the UK AI ecosystem.”
Recent EU-Startups reporting highlights significant capital deployment across Europe’s AI infrastructure and adjacent platform layers in 2025–2026.
In the UK, Nscale secured €936 million to expand hyperscale AI data centre capacity internationally, while Finland’s DataCrunch raised €55 million in Series A funding to scale European AI cloud infrastructure.
In adjacent segments supporting AI deployment and performance, London-based SurrealDB added €19 million to scale its multi-model database for AI applications, while Stanhope AI raised €6.7 million to advance adaptive AI systems for robotics and defence. Germany’s Blockbrain secured €17.5 million to develop enterprise-grade AI agents.
Further UK rounds included Toyo (€3.6 million) and Overmind (€2.3 million), both focused on secure AI agent deployment.
Collectively, these rounds represent approximately €1.04 billion in disclosed funding, with a notable concentration of activity in the UK.
Within this context, CommonAI’s €18 million ARIA-backed Scaling Inference initiative sits within a broader European investment cycle focused on strengthening AI compute capacity, operational efficiency and deployment tooling, particularly at the infrastructure and systems layer underpinning real-world AI applications.
Sir Andy Hopper, Chairman, CommonAI CIC, adds: “The Scaling Inference Lab creates a practical environment where new AI infrastructure can be tested and proven at system scale. It builds on CommonAI’s vision of shared infrastructure, allowing organisations to innovate without needing the scale or resources of large technology providers. By improving access to efficient, trusted computing platforms, we can help create a more accessible AI ecosystem and unlock greater economic opportunity across the UK.”
Launched in 2025, CommonAI is building a coalition of engineers, AI specialists, entrepreneurs, academics, and investors. It aims to empower early-stage startups and enterprises with access to cutting-edge technology, compute power, and shared IP through a foundational Digital Commons resource.
By reducing reliance on Big Tech while catalysing secure innovation, CommonAI looks to help organisations develop and scale AI solutions safely, affordably, and effectively.
Through its membership model, organisations participate in specific programmes aligned to their priorities, with CommonAI stewarding delivery and operational capability.
As part of its membership, ARIA will lead and fund the Scaling Inference Lab (part of ARIA’s wider Scaling Compute programme), with CommonAI establishing and operating a dedicated research and engineering lab embedded within real data-centre environments.
This lab will enable AI systems to be tested and improved under real-world conditions by integrating hardware, software and operational design. It will support researchers, startups, scale-ups and companies developing AI systems for real-world use across sectors including finance, healthcare, science and national infrastructure. By improving how AI systems run in practice, it aims to accelerate deployment, support innovation and help create new businesses and high-value jobs across the UK economy.
This marks a significant step forward for CommonAI, moving from concept into live delivery with national backing and collaboration, and showcases how a collaborative shared-infrastructure approach can accelerate innovation and translate ideas into operational capability at pace across the UK AI ecosystem.
The Scaling Inference Lab forms part of a national effort to improve how AI systems operate at scale in the real world, particularly during the operational phase known as “inference”, where most computing cost and energy use occurs.
CommonAI says that improving efficiency at this stage is critical to managing energy demand and reducing infrastructure pressure as AI adoption grows globally. The initiative also supports the UK’s wider Compute Roadmap, and aligns with the UK’s Industrial Strategy, which places AI at the centre of national economic development, helping connect research with national testbeds and real-world deployment so promising technologies can scale successfully.
Suraj Bramhavar, ARIA Programme Director, says: “To reduce compute costs by 1000x, we need to move from theory to delivery. CommonAI is the right partner because their DNA is built on translating research into working, industrial-quality foundations. By leveraging their ability to build and operate shared infrastructure in live settings, combined with a proper institutional framework for collaborative research, we’re giving startups the rigorous, independent platform they need to prove their hardware is ready for the real world.”
The initiative builds on CommonAI’s collaborative model of AI infrastructure. Since launching, CommonAI has focused on lowering barriers to advanced computing through shared infrastructure, expertise and foundational technologies delivered via a digital commons.
Unlike traditional approaches where organisations build infrastructure independently, this collaborative model accelerates the path from research to commercial use, creates a more level playing field in AI development, reduces reliance on Big Tech, and helps attract investment into the UK ecosystem by lowering development costs and technical risk.
Scaling Inference is the first collaborative engineering programme to launch on the CommonAI platform. Building on this momentum, CommonAI is also establishing a High Assurance programme focused on applications in regulated and mission-critical sectors, with early members already joining following the launch of Scaling Inference.
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