UK to invest £100m to build "world's first" AI biosecurity laboratory

The UK government will invest £100m as part of Wednesday's budget to establish what is called the "world's first" national AI biosecurity laboratory (AIBL) to strengthen defenses against emerging biological threats, and OpenAI and Anthropic will provide £200m worth of model usage credits. The Chancellor will also add £120m to UK AISI to help it continue assessing the risks of the most advanced models; at the same time, £60m will be invested to build a "national cyber shield" using agentic AI to enhance cyber defense, and £70m will be invested to build a National Exposure and Real-time Vulnerability (NERV) center using AI tools to detect cyber vulnerabilities in UK critical infrastructure and the economy. Full details of the new laboratory's role and responsibilities have not yet been announced; AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said it will be a large global institution bringing together world-leading scientific expertise.