DSIT’s £100m AI Mission Hubs: Funding Signals for Innovation Bidders
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has committed £100m to AI Mission Hubs addressing health, Net Zero, and defence missions. Here’s how innovation grant teams should respond ahead of the first calls opening in 2025.
TL;DR
- Three AI Mission Hubs will launch in 2025 spanning health diagnostics, Net Zero optimisation, and trusted defence applications.
- DSIT and Innovate UK will issue competitive calls for academic-industry consortia; bids must show real-world deployment plans.
- Refresh your consortium MoUs, AI governance checklist, and Crafty prompt library to align with mission priorities.
What did DSIT announce in July 2024?
At London Tech Week, DSIT unveiled the AI Mission Hubs programme to connect AI research with mission-critical public sector needs, backed by £100m of public investment plus matched private capital (source: GOV.UK press release, 10 July 2024). Innovate UK will manage competition rounds, with the first calls expected in spring 2025.
Which missions do the AI hubs target?
DSIT has identified three priority missions:
- Health – AI diagnostics, personalised medicine, NHS productivity.
- Net Zero – Grid optimisation, industrial decarbonisation, climate modelling.
- Resilient defence & security – Trusted AI for situational awareness and logistics (working with MOD).
Each hub will provide multi-year funding, living labs, regulatory sandboxes, and access to compute resources via the AI Research Resource programme.
How should bidders prepare now?
Use the winter window to:
- Refresh consortium agreements using the MoU kit to cover IP, compute access, and responsible AI.
- Update your responsible AI checklist to align with DSIT’s AI safety commitments.
- Populate Crafty’s knowledge base with mission-aligned evidence and reuse modules from the modular answer library.
Key resources and next steps
Monitor Innovate UK’s competition listings, subscribe to the AI Mission Hubs mailing list, and line up stakeholder endorsements. Prepare living-lab case studies that demonstrate community or NHS impact to strengthen your narrative.
Action plan
- Identify which mission aligns with your technology roadmap.
- Secure letters of support from hospitals, energy partners, or defence primes.
- Load mission-specific prompts and evidence into Crafty ahead of the call launch.