'The EU is tricky, the UK is easier'

Good morning and happy last day of the heatwave.

News In Brief 🩳

Advantage, Wales: Vantage Data Centres and neo-cloud Nebius are bringing Nvidia's latest AI hardware to Newport, south Wales, the first commercial announcement since the area was designated an AI Growth Zone by the government.

Gene in the bottle: Ministers are looking at how to stop terrorists using AI to make bio-weapons by regulating AI’s use in gene synthesis, Bloomberg reports.

Safe trip: The WSJ has more on Demis Hassabis' trip to the US before the DeepMind reshuffle to pitch an AI safety watchdog. Meanwhile, several outlets are reporting that the White House will expand its AI framework to include open models.

Lots to come: The government's Sovereign AI Unit is finalising investments in another seven companies, its chair James Wise said, bringing its portfolio to 12 firms. Those seven will be earlier stage companies than the five already announced. Of the 12 portfolio companies, 11 have a UK topco (Alphabet spinout Isomorphic Labs being the exception), Wise wrote, responding to criticism about the unit investing in firms based abroad. All have to follow UK copyright law, he added. The unit will also launch procurement challenges for startups this autumn.

New lab: Seven ex-DeepMind researchers, led by Jack Parker-Holder, are in talks with Index to raise $500m for a new AI lab in London, Sifted reports.

Updates: Nvidia has released a new open model for local AI agents, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning. UK startup Locai Labs has built its latest model on it to launch Locai One, an on-prem AI appliance for companies to move their workloads in-house. Elsewhere, Quantinuum is partnering with Oracle to bring quantum computing to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). 

Summer camp: The government is kicking off AI bootcamps in north-west England today, targeted at young people out of work or at risk of unemployment.