AIRR Heterogeneous Supercomputer Host Site and Data Centre Grant Competition

The lead applicant must, on the closing date: 

ELIGIBILITY-1: Be based in the UK and have legal personality in the UK. 

ELIGIBILITY-2: Be a research organisation eligible for UKRI funding. 

ELIGIBILITY-3: Have demonstrable, verifiable experience of delivering, hosting or operating a high-value, large-scale compute service at national level for research and/or innovation users. Applicants must draw clear parallels between their cited experience and the requirements of this grant scheme. 

ELIGIBILITY-4: Have written institutional backing from its Vice-Chancellor, Chair, CEO or equivalent. 

ELIGIBILITY-5: Be responsible for both data centre infrastructure provision and data centre support services, either directly or through named consortium partners. 

ELIGIBILITY-6: Ensure that consortium members (including commercial co-location providers) are UK-incorporated, manage their operations in the UK and undertake the majority of their economic activity in the UK. A signed memorandum of understanding between all members is required at application; a binding collaboration agreement is a condition of grant. 

ELIGIBILITY-7: Formally commit to meeting all binding delivery milestones set out in Section 2.2, specifically full 10 MW Phase 1 energisation by 31 December 2027 and full 30 MW Phase 2 energisation by 31 March 2029. 

ELIGIBILITY-8: Hold written, verifiable evidence of a DNO connection offer securing a firm import capacity of at least 14 MVA by Phase 1 and at least 41 MVA by 31 March 2029. 

ELIGIBILITY-9: The lead applicant (or a named consortium member) must have demonstrable, verifiable experience of delivering a data centre of comparable scale and complexity to time, quality and cost. This includes managing the supply chain and subcontractors, and procuring long-lead electrical and mechanical plant. Applicants must draw clear parallels between their cited experience and the requirements of this grant scheme.

• Select a host site for the AIRR Heterogeneous Supercomputer. 

• Fund the data centre infrastructure and support services, including premises, construction, power, liquid cooling, networking and security. 

• Deliver Phase 1 readiness by January 2028, providing up to 10MW of usable IT power. 

• Enable expansion to 20–30MW by FY2029/30, with sufficient physical space and power headroom. 

• Provide secure, well-connected facilities to support frontier AI, large-scale inference and scientific research. 

The grant does not fund the supercomputer hardware itself—its procurement, installation, integration and user-facing administration are funded separately.

Competition window – 11 – 25 November 2026  

Deadline for clarification questions - 18 November 2026 

Evaluation of applications – 26 – 30 November 2026  

Applicants notified of outcome – by 8 January 2027 

Grant agreement signed – by 15 January 2027 

Grant spend completed – 31 March 2030

Please email the completed documents attached in the 'Supporting information' section to compute@dsit.gov.uk. Detailed application instructions can be found within 'Document 5 - Data Centre Grant Competition — Applicant Response Form.'

Questions about the AIRR Heterogeneous Supercomputer Host Site and Data Centre Grant Competition can be submitted to Compute@dsit.gov.uk. Please clearly reference the competition in your email.

We will aim to publish responses to clarification questions on Find a Grant under the Supporting documents tab at regular intervals. The final deadline for submitting clarification questions is Wednesday 18 November, with the final responses published by Friday 20 November.

If you would also like to receive clarifications by email, please contact Compute@dsit.gov.uk and ask to be added to the mailing list.

The previous EOI can be found here.