Whitespace joins Aurora-led programme as a founding Sovereign AI company

Whitespace has been selected as one of the founding Sovereign AI companies in a new UK programme designed to accelerate the adoption of AI at scale across Defence. Convened with Aurora and a cohort of UK-based AI SMEs, including Faculty, FSP and Aiimi, the programme will focus on boosting productivity, saving time and cost, and increasing the pace of delivery for MOD programmes across the defence enterprise.
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The new programme closely aligns with the Strategic Defence Review and Defence Industrial Strategy:
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- Accelerating adoption of AI and autonomy to put new capability in the hands of the warfighter faster, with procurement measured in months, not years.
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- Building sovereign AI capabilities in partnership with the Defence AI Centre and DSIT’s Sovereign AI Unit - strengthening UK strategic advantage and supporting the emergence of national champions.
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- Driving digitally enabled acquisition and more open, trusted collaboration between MOD and industry through secure digital environments, shared data, and common standards.
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Our contribution to this new AI programme:
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- We will bring Whitespace’s CollectiveOS to enable rapid GenAI and AgenticAI capability development against productivity and mission-critical “unmet needs”
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- We will work with the consortium partners to contribute to developing a common set of AI architectures and standards - with this work, the whole ecosystem can build faster, integrate better, and reduce duplication across the MoD
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- We will help champion SME innovation and interoperability, supporting the DIS ambition to modernise Defence’s science, innovation and technology ecosystem
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Mark Lavis-Jones, Managing Director of Aurora, announced the new programme at DSEI, “Thank you to our partners for bringing together a UK SME-focused AI team with a shared mission: deliver real productivity gains across the Defence ecosystem. We’re excited to build new technologies—and to give back to the industry by shaping common architectures and standards that make life easier for us all. This is new terrain; we’ll move cautiously but quickly, with shared intent.”