20 December 2025
ARIA 2024 wrapped
As we wrap up 2024, we’re reflecting on our journey to date and celebrating some milestones:
🚀 82 Creator teams funded
💷 £110M research funding under contract
🔎 1,714 proposals submitted with 6,856 reviews
🇬🇧 82% of funding awarded to UK-based teams
🌟 8 international organisations attracted to launch UK operations
👥 47-person ARIA team
It's exciting to see momentum building across the community as our opportunity spaces begin to take root. Over the past twelve months, we've awarded £110 million in funding to support teams working on a wide range of projects: from exploring how glacial meltwater travels from the Antarctic glacial margins to the open ocean; to engineering miniature vehicles that respond to external stimuli; and developing foundational theories for safe and reliable functioning of AI systems – and much more.
This is just the beginning. We’re on a journey to empower scientists to push the boundaries of what’s possible. Here are just a few of our early highlights:
- More than 82% of our research funding supports UK-based teams, spanning the length and breadth of the country – from St Andrews to Southampton, and Leeds to Exeter – across a wide range of institutions, including 23 universities, 17 companies, 2 independent entrepreneurs, and 1 non-profit.
- ARIA funding is driving the creation of new research models, including the UK’s first worker-owned cooperative research labs: GLAiVE and Asterisk Labs.
- Our programmes are leading ambitious international organisations to either establish or expand their UK operations. Companies like Rain UK and Normal Computing are setting up here to reimagine the future of AI hardware and build out the UK's capabilities in the field. Through our support, our Activation Partners – including Pillar VC, 50 Years and Convergent Research – are launching new UK programmes to spur the translation of breakthroughs in our opportunity spaces into real world applications.
There's much more to come in the new year – from Creator announcements and project updates to our second cohort of Programme Directors exploring new scientific frontiers.