techUK insight: UK Government launches ‘AI for Science Strategy’

On 20 November 2025, Ministers Kanishka Narayan MP and Lord Patrick Vallance published the UK's AI for Science Strategy, a plan designed to position the UK at the forefront of AI-driven scientific discovery.

Key announcements

The strategy allocates up to £137 million from the UK Government's broader £2 billion AI investment (2026-2030) to accelerate AI-enabled scientific breakthroughs. This builds on the AI Opportunities Action Plan published in January 2025 and directly supports the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy.

Three core pillars

The strategy centres on three key areas: data, compute, and people and culture. Together, the aim is to provide the foundations, tools, and skills researchers need to tackle complex scientific challenges:

Data: Creating high-quality, AI-ready datasets and expanding storage infrastructure. UKRI will mandate that all relevant experimental data from UKRI-owned facilities meets FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) by 2030. New data repositories will be co-located with sovereign compute at Bristol and Edinburgh.
Compute: Providing researchers with scaled access to the AI Research Resource (AIRR), including Isambard-AI supercomputer. New allocation pathways will offer everything from small-scale gateway access (10,000 GPU hours) to system takeover capacity (1.4 million GPU hours) for mission-critical projects.
People and culture: Training at least 1,000 AI-fluent researchers through expanded doctoral programmes over five years, increasing interdisciplinary fellowships, and developing career pathways for research technical professionals.

Priority areas:

The strategy targets sectors where the UK has existing strengths and AI can accelerate progress:

Advanced materials
Fusion energy
Medical research
Engineering biology
Quantum technologies

These align with the Digital and Technologies sector plan, which identifies AI as one of six frontier technologies essential for driving growth.

Mission-driven approach

The strategy launches time-bound missions designed to galvanise coordinated action. The first mission sets an ambitious target to develop trial-ready drugs within 100 days by 2030. This includes £8 million for the OpenBind consortium at Diamond Light Source to generate protein-ligand structural data and leveraging the new Health Data Research Service backed by up to £600 million. Additional missions spanning the priority areas are expected to be selected in 2026.

Autonomous labs and AI-driven science

A significant focus is on accelerating the development of autonomous laboratory infrastructure that can carry out experiments and generate insights without human intervention. The Sovereign AI Unit will launch an open call for proposals to develop or scale autonomous lab platforms, building on successes like Liverpool’s Materials Innovation Factory. The strategy also commits to working with teams developing end-to-end AI science tools, including through ARIA’s exploratory ‘AI scientist’ proposals.

What does this mean for the AI sector?

The strategy highlights significant opportunities for the AI sector. It is focused on strengthening public-private partnerships, building on successful models such as UKRI’s Prosperity Partnerships and the Open Targets consortium.

With its focus on data infrastructure, access to compute, and interdisciplinary research, the strategy seeks to opens doors for technology providers to collaborate closely with the research community. It also recognises the vital role of a broad range of companies like Isomorphic Labs, as well as emerging startups such as Latent Labs, CuspAI, and DaltonTx, in shaping the ‘AI-for-science' ecosystem.

With AIRR compute now available for industry-academic collaborations, and the UK Government actively bringing partners together for dataset creation, the strategy lays out tangible routes for commercial engagement in driving forward UK research capabilities.

What’s next?

DSIT and UKRI will lead mission selection for 2026 launches, with further details on AIRR access calls expected in Autumn 2025. UKRI is due to publish its revised research data policy in 2026, which will modernise requirements to ensure UKRI-funded research aligns with FAIR principles and supports an AI-ready data landscape. The forthcoming UKRI AI Strategy will complement this by setting out specific objectives and actions for normalising 'AI-first' data generation and management across the research ecosystem.

You can read the full announcement here.

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