NVIDIA commits $250 million of computing to UK research on AI agent safety

NVIDIA announced the commitment on 14 October. The donation is computing access worth $50 million a year for five years, set aside for research on the safety and security of AI agents, software that carries out tasks on its own.

Most of it goes to the wider UK AI safety and security research community. Part supports three groups: BOLD, the British Open-Ended Learning and Discovery Lab led by the University of Oxford; SOFAIR, the Science of Fundamental AI Research Lab led by UCL, which explores open source AI architectures; and Imperial College London, whose work includes safety engineering and robotics.

UK-based NVIDIA Cloud Partners will host the computing in the UK, but NVIDIA says provider selection, technical architecture and commercial terms are still to be agreed. The research will cover secure agents, open-model security and defences against real-world threats, including work with NVIDIA’s OpenShell runtime software and its Sentry reference design.

The same day, NVIDIA announced planned investments in five UK startups: Boltz, Foresight, Hiverge, Prima Mente and Riverlane.