UK puts £130m into AI agents that hunt security flaws

The UK government has allocated £130 million to AI-powered cyber defences, including plans to deploy autonomous AI agents across critical infrastructure to find security flaws before attackers do, The Register reported on 26 October 2026. The money forms part of a wider package of more than £600 million in AI spending announced by the Treasury ahead of this week's Budget.

Of the cyber funding, £60 million is earmarked for a new National Cyber Shield that uses agentic AI, meaning software that acts on its own rather than simply answering questions. That figure includes a £25 million challenge fund for UK cybersecurity companies and plans for a regulatory sandbox to test autonomous security tools across critical infrastructure, government and industry.

The remaining £70 million will establish a National Exposure and Real-Time Vulnerability Centre, known as the NERV Centre, which the government says will use AI to find vulnerabilities across Britain's infrastructure and the wider economy. According to The Register, it remains unclear how much freedom the new AI defenders will have to act without human intervention, or when they will be deployed.

The announcement follows the PHP2Shell security scare, which saw dozens of government websites taken offline after critical flaws were found in the widely used scripting language. The National Cyber Security Centre worked with OpenAI to coordinate disclosure of the PHP flaws and give affected vendors time to prepare fixes, after AI-assisted researchers uncovered them.

Whitehall has already been trialling AI-driven vulnerability hunting. The UK's AI minister said last week that the technology had uncovered 500 previously unknown security flaws across significant parts of the public sector. The former head of the NCSC, Ciaran Martin, welcomed the investment and pointed to the week's events as evidence that Britain needs to improve its defences. "We need to padlock our systems, and harness AI for defense," he said.

A further £120 million goes to the AI Security Institute, which tests advanced AI systems for dangerous capabilities and researches ways to keep them under control. Manchester will host a new NCSC AI Cyber Security Centre of Excellence to train government specialists.

Beyond cyber, £165 million will fund a National AI Biosecurity Initiative. That includes £100 million for what the government describes as the world's first dedicated AI Biosecurity Lab, an independent non-profit that will use frontier AI models to detect biological threats and speed up development of vaccines and treatments. OpenAI is contributing £100 million in compute and model credits, and Anthropic is offering up to £100 million in model credits, model access and technical support. Google DeepMind and the British biotech firm Basecamp Research are also involved. The remaining £65 million will go towards biosurveillance and medical countermeasures against dangerous pathogens.

The package also adds £60 million to the Sovereign AI Fund to invest in British companies working on robotics and autonomous systems, plus £60 million for AI research and development procurement. Another £18 million will fund an Advanced Chip Design Academy, intended to build domestic semiconductor expertise and reduce reliance on technology designed overseas. Smaller sums cover £30 million for local AI partnerships, £15 million for an AI challenge prize focused initially on healthcare, and £23 million for research into AI's effect on jobs and the economy. Ministers are separately setting aside £10 million a year to study how AI will reshape employment and industry, including the jobs it might make redundant.