Funder: UK Research and Innovation
Due Dates: November 10, 2026, 4:00pm UK time (Application deadline) | February 1, 2027 (Required project start)
Funding Amounts: Up to £602,500 full economic cost; UKRI funds 80% (up to £482,000) for up to 24 months
Summary: Supports speculative, high-risk technical research capable of delivering a step change in the sustainability of future AI systems.
Key Information: Applicant teams must participate in distributed peer review; missing required reviews can trigger automatic rejection.
Description
Delivered through UKRI’s flagship IS8 AI Programme, this opportunity funds ambitious, technology-led research to make future AI sustainable by design. It supports novel hardware, algorithms, software, computational approaches, tools and architectures that fundamentally improve efficiency, robustness, reliability and long-term maintainability while reducing environmental impacts. Projects should develop and demonstrate technology, rather than solely assess or benchmark sustainability.
Relevant work includes energy-efficient algorithms, smaller task-specific models, resource-constrained AI, hardware–software co-design, efficient processors and repairable hardware. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome where they demonstrably advance AI technology. The programme prioritises transformative ideas over incremental improvements, with small-scale projects generating foundations for future development. Full success, new models or spinouts are not expected within two years; unsuccessful approaches can still produce valuable knowledge.
