By Lucas Amin and HennyGe Wichers
A flagship British research agency set up to “restore Britain’s place as a scientific superpower” has given more than £50 million of UK taxpayer cash to US tech companies and venture capital projects.
Dreamed up by Boris Johnson’s former advisor Dominic Cummings, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) was devised as a British version of the US’s long-running Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which develops cutting-edge technology for the American state.
But a joint investigation by Democracy for Sale and the Guardian has found that ARIA is handing out tens of millions of pounds in British public money to private US firms, some of which were set up just days before the awards were made and already have billionaire investors from Silicon Valley.
In one case, ARIA awarded nearly £9 million to an American company backed by OpenAI founder Sam Altman to develop energy efficient AI. It is unclear whether the firm, Rain Neuromorphics Inc, is still trading.
ARIA also gave £6 million to an AI business owned by a US parent company and backed by Google cofounder Eric Schmidt. Normal Computing Ltd set up its UK arm just three weeks before its ARIA deal began.
A US venture capital firm, Pillar VC, was also given a £10.9 million award to run fellowships for AI researchers just a day after incorporating a subsidiary in the UK.
The findings raise questions about whether ARIA is meeting the purpose set out in the legislation that created it.
“The ARIA Act requires the organisation to benefit the UK by driving economic growth, supporting scientific innovation or improving quality of life,” Labour MP Chi Onwurah, chair of the commons science and technology committee, said.
“It’s unclear how funding US-based venture capital and tech firms meets these aims, or aligns with the government’s commitment to regional innovation.”
Our findings come as technology secretary Liz Kendall this week pledged to develop “AI sovereignty” and reduce Britain’s dependency on foreign tech.
Cecilia Rikap, an economics professor at University College London, said: “Disguised as promoting moonshot projects, the government is using taxpayer money to further expand the power of the US tech ecosystem.”
“This is not a surprise coming from a government that has agreed to be not only Trump’s but also big tech’s footman.”
ARIA defended its approach, saying its mission is “to unlock breakthroughs that benefit the UK” and that “over 80% of our funding goes to UK-based teams.” Where it funds international organisations, a spokesperson said, “it is to transfer scientific capabilities to the UK, with contractual protections ensuring the benefits flow back here.”
But the agency’s “standard approach” is not to take shares or intellectual property rights in the companies it funds, according to its website. Democracy for Sale understands that ARIA requires a royalty fee on any intellectual property commercialised outside the UK, though it is unclear how this works in practice.
ARIA was set up in 2022 to fund cutting edge scientific research and “moonshot” projects – like this controversial experiment to block sunlight from hitting the earth to reduce global temperatures. Its chair is Keir Starmer’s former AI tsar Matt Clifford.
ARIA has been described as “bringing Silicon Valley’s free market fundamentalism and its ‘move fast and break things’ ethos to disrupt the buttoned-up British science establishment,” in a recent report by environmental group ETC.
The research agency was explicitly designed to be free from “red tape.” At Cummings’ behest, the Conservative government made the new agency exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Last year, Democracy for Sale won a legal challenge, which found ARIA must still respond to environmental transparency requests.
ARIA does, however, publish details of who it funds – and those public records show that of the £400 million that the agency has allocated in past two years, £52 million has gone to nine firms based in the US and three more which are US-headquartered but set up UK arms very shortly before winning their deals.
Much of the money went to companies with high profile Silicon Valley investors.
A rival of Elon Musk’s Neuralink was given £5m to research how to “measure and manipulate” the “brain states” of people with mental health problems via a therapeutic wearable device. Motif Neurotech Inc had already raised more than £13m from ten private investors. It is working in partnership with a UK firm.
ARIA has given US venture capital firm Fifty Years Industries LLC £7 million to teach Britain’s top scientists how to start up companies. The firm will run a 14-week crash course for 50 students twice a year for three years in total.
ARIA is also paying £5.4 million to a “venture cafe” company to run networking events for tech investors and entrepreneurs in London, Manchester and Edinburgh over the next three years. Wholly owned by a parent company in Massachusetts, the firm set up its UK arm on the same day it won its ARIA contract.
Rain Neuromorphics, which has been funded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and received almost £9 million in October 2024, was reported by the New York Post last year to be seeking emergency financing. ARIA has since closed one of its two contracts with the company. Rain did not respond to a request for comment.
Several US firms backed by ARIA told Democracy for Sale they had established a UK presence following their awards.
“More than half of this award is being used to directly fund work performed by our collaborator Mint Neuro, a UK startup,” a spokesperson for Motif Neurotech said. “Because of the award, we’ve established a UK subsidiary, Motif UK, which now employs engineers in London.”
Normal Computing said that “establishing a UK presence and building UK operations was a contractual condition of receiving ARIA funding” and that it had “reinvested approximately 150% of the award value back into the UK”.
Fifty Years Industries LLC told us it was “investing “over £5M per year in UK staff compensation” and that it had established a 12 person team in Britain. The company said it had funded two companies formed out of its program and that course graduates had raised £7m.
Pillar VC did not respond to a request for comment.
Rachel Coldicutt, executive director of Careful Industries, told us that “these investments show that the UK govt can’t help but follow the Silicon Valley playbook” and that “officials at ARIA see the UK as instrumental to US innovation.”
“The real challenge,” said Coldicutt, “should be how we use R&D to position and secure the UK in a shifting geopolitical and environmental landscape.”
