Activation Partners

ARIA’s mission is to unlock scientific and technological breakthroughs that benefit everyone.

To fulfil this mission, we must ensure those breakthroughs translate into widespread impact – it’s why we’re baking science entrepreneurship into all that we do, from the entrepreneurial drive of our Programme Directors and our different funding mechanisms to our founder-friendly funding terms which are designed to minimise barriers to scale.

We know that scientific breakthroughs alone won’t lead to impact. This is why we’re excited to pilot a new element to our model – our founding cohort of Activation Partners will help unlock latent ideas, empower talent, support new ventures and provide insights and connectivity across the opportunity spaces we’re exploring* – and the new ones we have yet to shape.

Our hypothesis is that by driving entrepreneurial activity in our current and future spaces, our partners will help maximise impact for the research we fund, and thus maximise the benefits to the UK.

From providing entrepreneurial training and access to high-quality market knowledge to delivering community building initiatives in our spaces, our partners will use their creativity, instincts and experience to deliver a portfolio of activities that ensure the breakthrough R&D we fund has a seamless route to societal impact.

Some of our partners are already established players in the UK, while others will be setting up operations here for the first time. Together, they will create new scientific talent pipelines, foster novel IP, and facilitate more investments within the UK R&D ecosystem.

Convergent Research will identify and develop Focused Research Organisation (FRO)-shaped opportunities in our opportunity spaces. FROs are a new scientific institutional model designed to make fast progress by using team science and systems engineering to tackle research bottlenecks. Working closely with ARIA Programme Directors and the broader UK research ecosystem, Convergent Research will aim to develop an initial cohort of 1-2 FROs to provide a new mechanism for executing research in our opportunity spaces, advance the UK’s scientific and technological capabilities and give scientists a new avenue to pursue cutting-edge, large-scale research projects in the UK.

Google DeepMind will work with us to identify projects designed to accelerate the impact of ARIA-backed research. This will include leveraging its team of multidisciplinary researchers, alongside its broader network, to provide access, insights, and connectivity to researchers, and drive applications within our opportunity spaces. [Google DeepMind’s partnership with ARIA will not include a funded component].

In partnership with ARIA, Pillar VC will launch a fellowship program placing top AI researchers in leading UK science labs. Fellows will spend up to 12 months embedded in labs focusing on our opportunity spaces, covering topics across neuroscience, robotics, climate science, and more. Each fellow will receive a competitive stipend, access to state-of-the-art computing resources, and the opportunity to work on some of the most pressing scientific challenges of our time. Through the programme, Pillar VC will deepen its UK presence, investing in ecosystem development through events, programming, and post-fellowship support. Together, these activities will seek to nurture scientific breakthroughs by integrating AI with fundamental research, transforming innovative projects into tangible real-world impact.

As an Activation Partner, Renaissance Philanthropy will launch a new UK Horizons Programme to supercharge the UK’s R&D ecosystem. The new programme will build communities, programmes, and efforts that will act as force multipliers for our opportunity spaces. This will include expanding the diversity of science translation mechanisms in the UK ecosystem, attracting  flexible and patient capital available to scientists and building translation strategies to scale the impact of R&D in our opportunity spaces and enable societal benefits.

Amodo Design is an engineering team that will work with our Programme Directors and Creators to develop new scientific equipment for research and prototype inventions from our opportunity spaces. This aims to enable new discoveries and then to de-bottleneck the process of turning discoveries into real-world impact by speeding up the journey from discovery to product, enhancing early-stage traction.

Fifty Years will work across our opportunity spaces, delivering its company creation programme 5050 in the UK. 5050 equips scientists and engineers with the necessary skills to start and build world-changing companies that can solve humanity’s greatest challenges. 5050 participants will identify civilisation-scale problems to tackle, develop essential entrepreneurship skills, grow into great founders, and learn everything they need to commercialise their research. Two 5050 cohorts will run per year to help great scientists and engineers become great founders. The first 5050 UK cohort will kick off in early 2025. 

Cambridge University Health Partners (CUHP) will bring together leaders from science, health and business organisations, including Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, the University of Cambridge including the Maxwell Centre and the Milner Therapeutics Institute, Cambridge Network, Cambridge Neuroscience, Vellos, and the Babraham Research Campus, to support our Scalable Neural Interfaces opportunity space. Working with ARIA, CUHP will launch programmes designed to accelerate innovation in neurotechnology by enabling scientists, clinicians and entrepreneurs to collaborate and translate speculative science into practical applications at scale whilst fostering a vibrant UK-wide neurotech community.

CIC and Venture Café Global Institute will launch their global network of innovation communities, Venture Café, across the UK, in partnership with ARIA. Venture Cafés activate innovation ecosystems by connecting innovators, entrepreneurs, and small businesses on a weekly basis through free, high-impact programming and events. The first UK Venture Café will launch in London in early 2025 building on the city’s vibrant entrepreneurial community with two additional UK locations following soon after. These Venture Cafés will focus on connecting talent within our current and emerging opportunity spaces to the broader UK innovation ecosystem to advance progress and ensure scalable impact.

Nucleate UK and ARIA will partner to accelerate the development of new technologies and communities in the eco and biotech fields, focusing initially on our Programmable Plants opportunity space. By identifying and supporting top UK scientific talent through targeted programmes, Nucleate will help transform early-stage ideas into concrete initiatives that translate R&D into societal impact.