ARIA Other Opportunity Spaces

ARIA Activation Partners RFP

Offers collaboration opportunities for United Kingdom organizations designing advanced activity hubs across strategic AI opportunity spaces.

⚠ This may reflect a past cycle — verify the current call on the funder's site.

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) launched a £100 million Activation Partners Request for Proposals in 2026 to recruit up to 10 new organisations that will design and run bespoke activities across ARIA's Opportunity Space portfolio. Activation Partners are distinct from standard grant recipients: they operate as portfolio-running partners, designing science translation activities, managing programme execution, and embedding advanced AI capabilities into funded R&D. The call is integrated with ARIA's AI Scientist initiative, which applies frontier AI-for-science models and autonomous laboratory tools to ARIA-funded work.

Award sizes range from £5 million to £20 million per partner, with a median expected at approximately £10 million, reflecting the operational scale required. Eligible applicants are UK-registered organisations — universities, accelerators, research laboratories, and foundations — with demonstrated capability to coordinate multi-disciplinary activities across several Opportunity Spaces simultaneously. Individual applicants are not eligible. The RFP does not restrict sector or TRL, as the role is organisational and operational rather than tied to a specific research output.

The Activation Partner model is ARIA's mechanism for building the institutional infrastructure around its scientific programmes. Partners are expected to contribute coordination capacity, convening power, and AI-augmented R&D support rather than conduct primary research. Organisations best positioned to win are those that can credibly demonstrate track records running complex, interdisciplinary science programmes at scale and that have existing relationships with the UK research and innovation ecosystem.