Cosine has assembled a coalition of UK institutions to co-design its Lumen Sovereign AI model, bringing together organisations from defence, banking, telecoms and market infrastructure.
Organisations including Babcock International Group, BT, Lloyds Banking Group, LSEG, NatWest Group, PwC, Thales UK, Leonardo UK, BAE Systems, HSBC and Telefónica Tech UK&I have signed memoranda of understanding for the design phase. Other named coalition partners include Era4, Haleon and the Alan Turing Institute.
Lumen Sovereign is intended to be a frontier AI model trained entirely on Isambard-AI, a UK supercomputer, using compute allocated through the government's Sovereign AI programme. The system is being built to run within a customer's own infrastructure without external data transfer.
The project reflects a wider shift in how large institutions view artificial intelligence. Companies in regulated sectors and critical industries are increasingly treating access to AI systems, and control over where they are trained and operated, as a strategic issue rather than a standard software procurement decision.
Strategic concern
This is especially relevant for defence groups, banks, healthcare organisations and public sector bodies, where data sensitivity, operational resilience and governance requirements can restrict the use of AI tools developed and hosted abroad. Coalition members will work with Cosine to set use cases, security requirements and governance standards for the model.
Cosine has identified cybersecurity and adversarial testing, know-your-customer and anti-money laundering alert investigation, clinical trial coordination, legal document review and healthcare administration as early target areas. These are processes where data sensitivity and operational complexity have slowed the adoption of generative AI products.
The company said it has assembled domain-specific training datasets covering more than 30 workflows in regulated industries. Lumen Sovereign will be developed from proprietary datasets built in-house, rather than adapted from an existing open-source checkpoint.
Alistair Pullen, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Cosine, presented the effort as a response to concentration risk in the global AI market.
"AI is the single most important technology of our generation. Enterprises are increasingly waking up to the risk of being wholly dependent on foreign providers for this technology. Vendor lock in creates security risk, dependency risk and cost escalation risks. Cosine is addressing those risks by building a model that is fully trained on UK soil and available into air gapped environments at a far more efficient price point than OpenAI and Anthropic alternatives," Pullen said.
Industry backing
The breadth of the coalition suggests large incumbents want to shape AI systems around sector-specific controls rather than adapt internal processes to general-purpose tools. For telecoms operators, banks and defence contractors, the issue is not only model quality but also deployment terms, auditability and data location.
BT said its role would draw on digital infrastructure and cybersecurity expertise.
"As AI becomes a foundational technology for the UK economy, our customers need confidence that the systems they depend on are secure, trusted and aligned with their requirements. As the UK's leading connectivity provider, BT is excited to contribute its expertise in digital infrastructure and cyber-security to help shape the next generation of sovereign AI capabilities. This collaboration reflects our belief that innovation is strongest when industry, government and technology partners come together to build the foundations for future," said Chris Keone, Managing Director, Innovation, BT.
Babcock linked its involvement to its internal AI and data programme and to the need for UK-based tools in defence settings.
"As we ramp up our AI and Data Centre of Excellence (AIDEX), we are proactively looking to source sovereign AI tooling. Cosine has offered us a path to a completely UK native and highly customisable AI stack. Together, we can co-create and design AI models that are highly specific for the very complex defence environments we operate in. We are building an ecosystem of UK AI startups that can support our own in house capabilities, which together will play a critical role in supporting our national digital infrastructure. Cosine is a key part of that ecosystem," said Dr Peter Passaro, Director - AI and Data, Babcock International Group.
For financial market infrastructure and banking groups, the appeal centres on governance and deployment in tightly controlled environments. LSEG said the initiative fits its approach to trusted data and the secure use of AI in regulated workflows.
"AI adoption in regulated industries depends on trusted data, strong governance and secure deployment in the environments where institutions operate. This initiative aligns with LSEG's AI strategy, making trusted AI available responsibly and at scale across the workflows our customers use every day," said Emily Prince, Group Head of Enterprise AI, LSEG.
NatWest said the project gives UK institutions a chance to influence how AI develops around customer needs and responsible use.
"The UK has strong foundations in AI, and this is an opportunity for us to help shape its future in a way that is responsible and focused on real customer needs. We're prioritising using AI to improve how we serve customers and enhance how our colleagues work, and by collaborating with partners in the UK and overseas we can help develop AI that makes a real difference for customers and businesses across the UK," said Graham Smith, Head of AI, Data Science and Innovation, NatWest Group.
BAE Systems also pointed to the industrial policy dimension of the project and the role of startups in defence supply chains.
"Lumen Sovereign provides an encouraging example of innovation in practice - applying cutting-edge technology to critical sectors while strengthening the UK's sovereign AI capability. Working with start-ups such as Cosine presents an important opportunity to support innovation across the defence ecosystem, while positioning BAE Systems at the forefront of adoption. This collaborative approach helps to nurture a more dynamic and resilient UK industrial base," said Rob Merryweather, Group CTO, BAE Systems.