The UK government has pledged to invest £100 million to build a biosafety laboratory in collaboration with OpenAI and Anthropic.

According to Bloomberg, the UK government has announced it will invest £100 million (approximately $134 million) to build an artificial intelligence (AI) biosecurity lab, which will receive support from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. This move is part of a series of measures by the UK government aimed at enhancing its ability to understand and respond to AI-related risks. Per the UK government’s statement, the lab will use AI to detect and monitor biological threats. In addition to the aforementioned funding, OpenAI and Anthropic will also provide up to £200 million in AI model usage credits. The lab will also collaborate with Google DeepMind and life sciences firm Basecamp Research. Separately, the UK government has allocated an extra £65 million for the development of pathogen response measures. The establishment of this lab further clarifies the UK government’s AI strategic direction: creating a dedicated body outside existing government departments to conduct research, monitoring, and applications across different AI technology domains. The announcement also includes an additional £120 million in funding for the AI Safety Institute, one of the government agencies currently receiving the most substantial financial support, which is primarily responsible for regular assessments of frontier AI models. Additionally, the UK government will allocate an extra £23 million to the AI Economics Institute, which is currently under development and aims to analyze the impact of AI technology on the economy.