26.02.2026

# The Times: ARIA launches £50m AI chip testbed facility to take on the big guns

[External Link](https://www.thetimes.com/business/entrepreneurs/article/aria-launches-ai-chip-testbed-facility-n8sxz6xzf?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqeEKVy-z9csOIkQ742OONlkRknb3lrWA7GzCSgfweVNr7b0MisRrO8WRx6reh8%3D&gaa_ts=69a021b3&gaa_sig=0lqbVcIYIea7UFWGvuDNX0rfedCGZbvaYNj9ItpPISAYGOgeKIFWTjgTldnyEHpGgn042Z561mBN8DwzIBLV6w%3D%3D)

**UK bets £50m on breaking AI hardware's Nvidia monoculture.**

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency is funding a neutral facility where AI chip startups can prove their technology on real workloads - backing Callosum to build the first co-located heterogeneous compute cluster for scaling multi-agent intelligence.

[Read the article here.](https://www.thetimes.com/business/entrepreneurs/article/aria-launches-ai-chip-testbed-facility-n8sxz6xzf)