By Emma Thompson
Publication Date: 2026-10-15 00:00:00
NVIDIA has committed $50 million a year in computing access for five years to UK researchers working on the safety and security of AI agents. The majority of the $250 million program will support the wider research community, with a portion allocated to work involving university-led labs and Imperial College London.
Access will be funded through UK-based NVIDIA Cloud Partners using infrastructure hosted in the country. Provider selection, technical architecture and commercial terms remain to be agreed.
The announcement covers computing resources rather than cash grants to universities. Research will address secure AI agents, open-model security and ways to mitigate real-world threats, alongside controlled testing environments and reproducible safety benchmarks.
“AI capability and safety must advance together,” says Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “The U.K. brings world-class scientific rigor to this essential engineering challenge.”
Oxford, UCL and Imperial take different research roles
The British Open-Ended Learning and Discovery Lab (BOLD), led by the University of Oxford, is developing approaches that help AI systems learn, adapt and operate alongside people.
UCL leads the Science of Fundamental AI Research Lab (SOFAIR), which is exploring open-source AI architectures and more accessible approaches to developing and deploying AI. Imperial College London’s work will include safety engineering and robotics.
For BOLD, the research includes how governance and…