UK opens £100M Sovereign AI procurement fund

The UK launched its £100 million Sovereign AI R&D Procurement Scheme with four competitions covering NHS productivity, compute efficiency, defence integration and agent-security testing. The government’s funding announcement says successful firms will build demonstrator-stage technology, receive upfront payments where appropriate and retain the intellectual property they create. That makes this more than a grant headline: it is a state-backed route from prototype to reference customer. Founders targeting public-sector AI should read it beside the archive’s analysis of EU transparency deadlines and treat procurement readiness, evidence and data handling as product requirements.