Advanced Research and Invention Agency
ARIA
A government-backed agency modelled on DARPA, funding high-risk, high-reward research through programme directors who set their own opportunity spaces. Deliberately lighter-touch than conventional peer review, with a tolerance for failure written into its statute.
- Kind of funder
- Government body
- Where it funds
- UK-wide
- Indicative award size
- £100k – £20m
- Approx. annual research spend
- £200m
- Who can apply
- Universities, Research institutes, SMEs, Large businesses, Individual researchers
- Career stages
- Any stage
Programme-driven — opportunities appear and close on programme directors’ timetables.
Research areas
Named schemes (7)
Precision Mitochondria: ST&R – Request For Proposal ↗
The Precision Mitochondria programme aims to create a foundational toolkit for engineering the mitochondrial genome in vivo. Achieving this will require advances in delivery, expression, maintenance and transfer to work together – and for teams to be able to assess, reproduce and adapt one another’s methods. We will be seeking proposals from teams able to be the dedicated partner(s) to provide the shared scientific, technical and practical resource needed to turn promising individual advances into dependable capabilities that can be used across the programme. This includes, but is not limited to, supporting the transfer of methods and materials between laboratories, establishing shared benchmarks and reporting standards, and independently evaluating and reproducing results.
Open9 Nov 2026pulled from ARIA 2026-10-15Forecasting Tipping Points Phase 2: Full proposals ↗
The Forecasting Tipping Points programme is entering its second phase, moving from understanding the science of climate tipping points to building a usable early warning system for the North Atlantic. We are seeking ambitious, interdisciplinary teams that can fill specific gaps in our portfolio as we build an end-to-end early warning system: in adaptive ocean observation, state-estimate-linked forecasting, impacts and response, and independent systems integration.
Open2 Dec 2026pulled from ARIA 2026-10-28Robot Locomotion: TA1 + TA2 – Concept papers ↗
The Robot Locomotion programme will fund teams to build radically new robot bodies that can operate beyond the limits of today’s machines, such as carrying loads across rough terrain or inspecting hard-to-reach infrastructure. We are seeking proposals from teams rethinking robot locomotion from the ground up, from the foundational physical technologies supporting the robot bodies of the future, to integrated robot bodies that solve real operational problems and have clear routes to commercialisation. The advance must lie in hardware, not software, and it must produce an order-of-magnitude gain in how robots move, not an incremental improvement to existing designs.
Open4 Dec 2026pulled from ARIA 2026-10-22Robot Dexterity: Translation Partner – Request for Proposal ↗
Alongside its work on hardware components, the Robot Dexterity programme is backing efforts to turn those advances into complete, field-ready systems. Getting there requires engineering and commercial development to progress together. We will be seeking a partner to help robotics teams turn breakthroughs into globally competitive products and businesses, and to build an enduring UK capability in embodied AI and robotics. The partner will establish and operate a physical hub where robotics teams can access the facilities, expertise, training, and networks needed to develop products and grow businesses, shape milestone-led translation pathways with ARIA, and build a business model that sustains the hub beyond ARIA’s initial funding. R&D Creators within the programme will be the immediate priority, but the hub should serve the wider UK robotics ecosystem.
Open16 Dec 2026pulled from ARIA 2026-11-05ARIA programme calls ↗
Each ARIA programme director opens funding calls within their opportunity space on their own timetable. Check the site directly — programmes appear and close without a fixed annual cycle.
Rolling / recurringCheck funder site for current round£100k – £20m per awardchecked 2026-05-01Safeguarded AI: Cybersecurity – Rolling applications ↗
This £20m funding call seeks to test and accelerate the hypothesis that AI-enabled formal methods can make high-assurance cyber defence practical at scale. We're accepting proposals on a rolling basis, reviewed in quarterly batches, for Blue Teams (3–6 teams, approx. £2.5–3.5m each) to build production-grade, security-critical software components whose key security properties are backed by machine-checked proofs – validated through coordinated red-team exercises.
Rolling / recurringCheck funder site for current roundpulled from ARIA 2026-10-30Scaling Trust: Tracks 2+3 – Rolling applications ↗
This £49.8m programme seeks to build tools for agents to securely interact with one another in untrusted environments while respecting the preferences of their users. We're accepting proposals on a rolling basis, reviewed in quarterly batches, across two tracks: Track 2 – Tooling (4–6 teams, £200k–£2m each) to build open-source agents and reusable components for secure requirement capture, negotiation, protocol generation, and verification; and Track 3 – Fundamental Research (three Research Centres plus 4–12 smaller teams, £100k–£3m each) to turn empirical security into provable guarantees and unlock new cyber-physical trust primitives for agents.
Rolling / recurringCheck funder site for current roundpulled from ARIA 2026-10-30