Locai Labs and Civo Unveil ‘Project Mercury,’ the UK’s First Family of Sovereign Frontier Models

Empowering UK enterprises and government with secure, home-grown frontier models designed to drive innovation and accelerate Britain’s AI independence

Today, Locai Labs, the UK’s sovereign AI company, and Civo, the British sovereign cloud provider, announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to undertake Project Mercury. A programme to build the UK’s first pre-trained, sovereign large language models (LLMs), designed to reclaim British digital autonomy.

For a decade, the UK has operated as a "digital tenant," reliant on foreign-owned hyperscale cloud providers and AI model developers for its most sensitive computational needs. These companies are subject to control from their host nation governments and we have seen how they have been required to remove services from individuals who have criticised these governments. The Mercury Series aims to end this dependency. This partnership proves that the UK possesses the talent, the infrastructure, and the vision to develop, train, and host frontier-level AI entirely on home soil.

By providing a domestic alternative to foreign infrastructure and AI, Mercury reduces the geopolitical vulnerabilities associated with overseas-controlled data centres and AI models and ensures that British data and the use of AI by UK citizens stays under British jurisdiction.

The Mercury Series will be a family of LLMs engineered to meet the stringent security, residency, and compliance requirements of both the public and private sectors. From the secure digitisation of public sector services to providing a competitive edge for private sector enterprises in finance, healthcare, and engineering, Mercury aims to offer “Total Sovereignty” with a scalable solution for every workload. These new models will be available from Civo Sovereign Cloud resident in the UK or deployed and hosted on-premise within an enterprise’s own IT infrastructure.

The series will feature a range of models built and trained entirely in the UK:

●      Edge Intelligence: Efficient 0.8-30 billion-parameter models designed for local, low-latency applications.

●      Frontier Power: 256 billion-parameter models capable of handling the most complex generative AI tasks.

This collaboration arrives as the UK government accelerates its investment in domestic AI through the £500 million Sovereign AI Fund. The Mercury Series is the direct answer to the national goal of making the UK a maker of AI rather than just a taker of AI developed elsewhere. Furthermore, the Mercury Series will be developed using 100% renewable energy, proving that the future of British AI is as sustainable as it is powerful.

"This partnership is a pivotal moment for UK AI," said James Drayson, Co-Founder & CEO of Locai Labs. "By combining our advanced Mercury model development with Civo’s UK sovereign cloud infrastructure, we’re creating a trusted, homegrown AI ecosystem that meets the highest standards of security, sustainability, and performance. The technology of the future is being built right here. AI’s coming home!"

"Together, we are building a local ecosystem by creating a domestic alternative that reduces reliance on foreign-based infrastructure," said Mark Boost, Founder and CEO of Civo. "This partnership proves the UK can develop, train and host sovereign LLMs entirely on home soil, showing what two UK‑founded companies can deliver for the security and trust of other UK‑based enterprises."

About Locai Labs

Locai Labs is the UK’s Sovereign AI company. Based in London, the company developed GB1, the UK’s sovereign AI assistant, and the UK’s first sovereign foundation models.

About Civo

Civo is a UK sovereign cloud and AI platform delivering high-performance Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure from data centres located entirely within the United Kingdom. Civo enables organisations to build, deploy, and scale applications with full data residency, security, and compliance, ensuring true UK sovereignty.

Media Contacts

Locai Labs: press@locailabs.com

Civo: press@civo.com