The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is a UK non-departmental public body that funds high-risk, high-reward science through Programme Directors who design and run their own funding programmes, rather than through the peer-reviewed competitive grant calls used by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). ARIA also holds a statutory exemption from Freedom of Information requests, a governance carve-out no UKRI council shares.
ARIA is a British executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), established on 26 January 2023 under the Advanced Research and Invention Agency Act 2022. It operates independently of UKRI, with its own statutory ten-year mandate to fund research that is “risky, uncertain and speculative in nature.”
- What is ARIA and who runs it?
- How does ARIA’s Programme Director model actually work?
- ARIA vs UKRI: how the two funding models compare
- Why is ARIA exempt from FOI, and what does that mean for accountability?
- What does this mean for institutions bidding into ARIA’s 2026 calls?
- Answer-first Q&A
What is ARIA and who runs it?
ARIA was proposed by Dominic Cummings as a UK equivalent to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and it received Royal Assent as the Advanced Research and Invention Agency Act 2022. It launched with an initial £800 million in government funding, and the June 2025 Spending Review committed a further minimum of £1 billion over the 2025–2029 period.
ARIA is small by design. Its FY2024/25 annual report and accounts record just 53 employees and a £27.6 million annual budget. Dr Kathleen Fisher became ARIA’s CEO in February 2026, succeeding founding CEO Ilan Gur, who announced his departure in June 2025. Matt Clifford CBE remains Chair. The board also includes the Government Chief Scientific Adviser and advisors such as Sir Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind.
How does ARIA’s Programme Director model actually work?
Rather than issuing standing competitive calls, ARIA gives named Programme Directors — senior scientists and engineers hired for fixed terms — the authority to define an “opportunity space” and then build and fund a multi-year programme inside it. This is the single biggest structural difference from UKRI’s council-based, panel-reviewed system.
ARIA’s own published model breaks funding into four channels:
- Opportunity spaces — broad areas judged highly consequential, under-explored, and ready for new investment.
- Programmes — multi-year, multi-institution R&D efforts built inside an opportunity space by a Programme Director.
- Opportunity seeds — smaller, less structured awards to individuals or teams pursuing aligned but unprogrammed ideas.
- Activation Partners — non-profit and commercial partners who supply entrepreneurial talent and capital to help funded research reach deployment.
ARIA’s first cohort of eight Programme Directors joined in October 2023, with a second cohort of eight following in April 2025. Notable live programmes include Forecasting Tipping Points (a 27-team, £81 million climate-monitoring effort led by Sarah Bohndiek and Gemma Bale), Scaling Compute (targeting a 1,000-fold reduction in AI compute costs, led by Suraj Bramhavar), and a £50 million outdoor solar geoengineering research programme.
Funding terms are also structurally different. ARIA does not retain intellectual property rights over funded work, generally does not require match funding, and does not take equity itself, though it caps the equity that funded organisations can hold in spinouts.
ARIA vs UKRI: how the two funding models compare
UKRI remains the UK’s primary public research funder, distributing a combined budget of several billion pounds a year across seven research councils, Innovate UK and Research England through competitive, peer-reviewed calls. ARIA is built to complement, not replace, that system by taking on the speculative, early-stage bets UKRI’s accountability structures are not designed to absorb.
| Dimension | UKRI | ARIA |
|---|---|---|
| Funding decision-maker | Peer-review panels, per council | Individual Programme Directors |
| Primary mechanism | Competitive, published grant calls | Programme Director-defined “opportunity spaces” |
| Risk tolerance | Assessed feasibility, incremental risk | Statutory mandate to fund “risky, uncertain and speculative” work |
| IP treatment | Varies by scheme | ARIA does not retain IP rights |
| FOI status | Subject to Freedom of Information Act 2000 | Statutorily exempt from FOI requests |
| Legal basis | Higher Education and Research Act 2017 | Advanced Research and Invention Agency Act 2022 |
Institutions engaging with ARIA also encounter a different bidding rhythm: rather than responding to fixed annual calls, Creators (ARIA’s term for funded teams, ranging from individual PhD researchers to large organisations) are often recruited directly into a Programme Director’s opportunity space, or apply to time-limited programme-specific calls announced on a rolling basis.
Why is ARIA exempt from FOI, and what does that mean for accountability?
The Advanced Research and Invention Agency Act 2022 gave ARIA a statutory exemption from the Freedom of Information Act 2000, a provision Cummings pushed for on the grounds that FOI slows fast, high-risk decision-making. Labour MPs, including Dawn Butler, later attempted to repeal the exemption in Parliament; the attempt was defeated, and the exemption stands.
The exemption does not remove all scrutiny: ARIA still publishes annual reports and accounts, and its executives have appeared before the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, where CEO Ilan Gur confirmed in September 2025 evidence that UKRI’s Economic and Social Research Council has no authority to halt ARIA’s projects. In May 2026, this reduced-transparency model drew scrutiny after The Guardian reported that ARIA had allocated roughly £23 million to nine US-based technology companies and £29.4 million to three US venture capital groups, prompting economist Cecilia Rikap to question whether public money was expanding US tech-sector capacity rather than UK capability — a debate that reduced FOI visibility makes harder for outside researchers to independently audit.
What does this mean for institutions bidding into ARIA’s 2026 calls?
For research administrators and institutional leaders, the practical implication is a fundamentally different due-diligence process. Where UKRI bids are built around published assessment criteria and reviewer panels, ARIA engagement typically starts with a relationship to a specific Programme Director’s opportunity space, and success depends on fit with that programme’s technical thesis rather than a scored proposal against generic criteria.
Institutions should also budget for ARIA’s lighter contractual overhead — no mandatory match funding and no IP retention lowers the administrative burden compared with many UKRI schemes — while recognising that ARIA’s rolling, programme-specific calls require closer, more continuous horizon-scanning of ARIA’s opportunity spaces than the UKRI funding calendar demands. With a confirmed minimum £1 billion available over 2025–2029 and an expanding programme slate under incoming CEO Kathleen Fisher, ARIA calls are likely to grow in frequency and disciplinary breadth through 2026.
Answer-first Q&A
Is ARIA a government agency?
ARIA is an executive non-departmental public body, not a government department. It is sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and funded through Parliament, but the Advanced Research and Invention Agency Act 2022 gives it statutory independence from day-to-day ministerial direction over individual funding decisions.
Is ARIA part of UKRI?
No. ARIA is a separate legal body from UK Research and Innovation, created by its own Act of Parliament rather than sitting inside UKRI’s research-council structure. The two organisations are designed to be complementary, with ARIA funding higher-risk work that UKRI’s peer-review processes are not structured to support.
Who is the CEO of ARIA?
Dr Kathleen Fisher has been ARIA’s CEO since February 2026, after being named CEO Elect in November 2025. She succeeded founding CEO Ilan Gur, a former ARPA-E Programme Director who announced his departure in June 2025. Matt Clifford CBE has chaired ARIA’s board since 2022.
Is there a UK version of NASA?
Not via ARIA. ARIA is modelled on DARPA, the US Department of Defense’s high-risk research agency, not NASA, the US space agency. The UK’s space activities sit instead with the UK Space Agency, a separate executive agency also sponsored by DSIT.
Looking ahead
ARIA’s structural bet — Programme Director autonomy, reduced FOI accountability, and tolerance for failed projects — is now backed by a confirmed £1 billion funding floor through 2029, making it a permanent rather than experimental feature of the UK funding landscape. For institutions and research administration teams weighing whether to pursue an ARIA opportunity space or a UKRI call, the choice increasingly comes down to risk appetite and governance tolerance rather than funding availability alone.