UK launches open-source AI fund and data center design challenge

AI Minister Kanishka Narayan announced a package of support for open-source AI builders and new measures on data centers and robotics.

• Main announcement: The Minister announced an Open-Source AI Builder Fund providing over £500,000 worth of compute (160,000 GPU-hours) from the UK’s AI Research Resource to help hackathon winners turn prototypes into public AI tools, an Open-Source AI Builder Mentoring Scheme pairing winners with experts from the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI), and an Open-Source AI Dev Board giving ten UK-based developers under 30 a direct line into government; the Dev Board will convene roundtables over 2026.
• Additional actions/background: The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) partnered with NVIDIA for the Hack for Impact event; DSIT and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) launched a RIBA x DSIT Data Center Design Challenge to improve design, public engagement and sustainability for growing data centers; the Regulatory Innovation Office and Health & Safety Executive will work with industry to deliver joint guidance on collaborative robots to clarify how robots can work safely alongside people.