What Locai Labs does

Locai Labs Limited is a privately held British foundational AI company headquartered in London (Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road), founded in 2022 by James Drayson (CEO), George Drayson (CAIO), and Sujith Aleshwaram (CTO), with Lord (Paul) Drayson as Chairman. The company builds sovereign AI systems that customers own end-to-end \u2014 model weights, training pipeline, training data, and IP \u2014 rather than renting access through a foreign-controlled API. Its technical core is the patented Forget-Me-Not continual-learning framework, which post-trains open base models (NVIDIA Nemotron, Google Gemma, Qwen) on customer data and then keeps improving them via experience replay. The shipping product family includes the Jupiter series of post-trained LLMs, the Locai One on-premises AI computer (1\u20132\u00d7 NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 GPUs, from \u00a324,699), the Locai Platform software stack including an OpenAI-compatible API at \u00a36,000/year, the Locai Model Customiser for bespoke model training, an application suite (IDE extensions, chat UI, agentic coding CLI, RAG pipeline, iOS/Android apps), and the GB1 consumer British AI assistant.

The business model combines one-time hardware sales, recurring software subscriptions, bespoke model-training professional services, and managed deployment on Locai Labs\u2019 UK sovereign cloud. Go-to-market is enterprise field sales targeting regulated verticals \u2014 financial services, science and research, energy and utilities, telecoms, manufacturing, public sector, healthcare, legal, security and defence \u2014 where data residency, auditability, and IP ownership are procurement gates. Direct competitors are general-purpose frontier LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) and hyperscaler offerings; Locai\u2019s substitution argument is sovereignty, fixed cost, and post-trained domain fit rather than raw benchmark superiority. Only one public reference customer is disclosed (First Light Fusion, an Oxford fusion spinout using FLF Coder air-gapped). A flagship April 2026 MOU with Civo under Project Mercury extends the stack to from-scratch pre-trained sovereign foundation models (30B\u2013256B parameters) and is framed around a possible bid into the UK Government\u2019s \u00a3500 million Sovereign AI Fund.

Name

Locai Labs

Legal name

Locai Labs Limited

Website

https://locailabs.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2022

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Locai Labs is a London-based British foundational AI company that builds sovereign large language models and on-premises AI hardware, post-training open base models on customer data so regulated enterprises and governments can own the model, weights, and IP outright.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Sovereign Enterprise AI Software

NAICS

Software Publishers (5132), Custom Computer Programming Services (541511), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (5182)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Programming Services (7371)

akta.pro primary industry

Fine-Tuning, Adaptation & Custom Model Training (PEFT/LoRA/RLHF) (HDAAACAC)

akta.pro secondary industries

Model Hosting, Serving & Inference Platforms (HDAAACAB), AI Compute Cloud & GPU-as-a-Service (HDAAAAAK)

Keywords

• Sovereign AI solutions
• On-premises AI hardware
• Foundation model post-training
• Continual learning AI
• Enterprise AI deployment

Headquarters

HQ city

London

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Supply Chain

Revenue model

1. Hardware Sales (Locai One): One-time purchase of Locai One hardware units. Base model starts at £24,699 (1 GPU, up to 250 concurrent users), Pro model from £58,000 (2 GPUs, up to 500 concurrent users). Additional storage options at £500 (4TB) and £1,500 (8TB).
2. Software Subscription (Locai Platform): Annual subscription for Locai Platform software including API, chat UI, usage platform, and application layer. Priced at £6,000 per year.
3. Custom Model Training Services: Bespoke model training services through Locai Model Customiser, where frontier-class models are post-trained on customer proprietary data. Pricing on request.
4. Sovereign Cloud Deployment: Deployment on Locai Labs' dedicated UK sovereign cloud for customers who prefer not to use on-premise hardware. Weights, IP and continual-learning artefacts stay with the customer.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Locai Labs develops sovereign AI that customers own rather than rent, comprising post-trained large language models (Jupiter series and the 235B-parameter Locai-L1-Large), the Locai One fixed-cost on-premises AI computer, and the Locai Platform software stack (OpenAI-compatible API, chat UI, IDE and mobile applications). The proprietary Forget-Me-Not™ post-training framework enables continual learning on customer data, and bespoke models are delivered via Locai Model Customiser with deployment options on Locai One, the customer's own cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP), or Locai's UK sovereign cloud.

Product overview

Locai Labs offers a platform-plus-modules architecture centered on sovereign AI that customers own rather than rent. The core platform consists of Jupiter (post-trained LLM series), Locai Platform (software stack), and Locai One (on-premises hardware). Locai Model Customiser enables bespoke model training on customer data. An application suite provides IDE extensions (VS Code, JetBrains, Cursor), browser chat interface, agentic coding CLI, RAG pipeline, and mobile apps (iOS/Android). Project Mercury is a pre-trained foundation model series. GB1 is the consumer-facing British AI assistant. Sovereign National AI extends the approach at national scale. All offerings share the core differentiator of customer ownership of model weights, IP, and continual-learning artefacts, with deployment options including on-premises (Locai One), customer cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP), or Locai's UK sovereign cloud.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• GB1: The British AI assistant, a consumer expression of Locai's sovereign AI thesis, available at gb1.ai.
• Locai One
• Jupiter
• Project Mercury
• Forget-Me-Not™
• Locai Model Customiser

Products and services

• Locai One Fixed-cost on-premises AI computer that runs sovereign models inside the customer's own environment with no per-token bills. Base unit supports up to 250 concurrent users and models up to 120B parameters; Pro unit supports up to 500 concurrent users and models up to 300B parameters. Targeted at UK and European regulated enterprises, government departments and research organisations that need data residency, auditability and air-gapped operation.
• Locai Platform Annual subscription software stack (OpenAI-compatible REST API, chat UI, control panel, Python SDK) that serves Locai's own sovereign models or any open-source model (Llama, Qwen, DeepSeek, Gemma, Nemotron) to an entire organisation inside the customer's perimeter. API acts as drop-in replacement for api.openai.com/v1 with zero per-token bills and no vendor lock-in.
• Jupiter (Jupiter-N-120B) Sovereign post-trained large language model built on NVIDIA's Nemotron-3-Super-120B base, adapted for British context with Welsh language support, stronger instruction following (+4.1 vs base on IFBench reasoning-on), improved safety (-1.6 on AgentHarm) and +9.1 on Agentic Terminal Bench 2 (medium) versus the Nemotron base. Openly released on Hugging Face and usable inside Locai One or via Locai Platform.
• Locai-L1-Large Flagship British post-trained LLM, a 235B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts instruction model post-trained on a Qwen3 base and aligned with UK laws, languages and cultural context. Achieves +35.4 vs BritLLM on Celtic Languages (BritXNLI 74.48 vs 39.10) and competitive performance against frontier models on human preference (Arena Hard v2 72.90) and instruction following (IFEval 92.45).
• Locai Model Customiser Bespoke model-training service that post-trains a frontier-class base model (Nemotron, Qwen, Gemma or Mercury) on the customer's industry and proprietary data, then deploys the resulting model inside the customer's environment. Customer owns the model, weights and post-training pipeline, eliminating per-token bills and vendor lock-in.
• GB1 British AI assistant positioned as the consumer-facing expression of Locai's sovereign-AI thesis, providing a UK-sovereign chatbot whose outputs reflect the languages of the British Isles and a corpus of Britishness, British information and cultural norms. Available to individual consumers at gb1.ai.
• UK Sovereign Cloud Deployment Managed deployment service on Locai Labs' dedicated UK sovereign cloud for customers who prefer cloud deployment over on-premises hardware. Customer weights, IP and continual-learning artefacts remain with the customer, preserving data residency and IP ownership.

Quantifiable outcome

• Jupiter-N achieves +9.1% improvement on Agentic Terminal Bench vs Nemotron-3-Super-120B base (52.70% vs 43.60%)
• +4 more outcomes

Named customers1 record

Segments11 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration9 records

AI capability13 records

Feature6 records

Partnerships

Five partnerships are on record, tiered flagship and core.

• CivoflagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 21 April 2026Locai Labs and Civo signed a memorandum of understanding to develop the UK's first sovereign large language models through Project Mercury. The partnership will create the Mercury Series of LLMs (30B to 256B parameters) hosted on Civo's UK-based sovereign cloud, providing a local alternative to foreign-owned AI developers. The companies may seek funding from the UK Government's £500 million Sovereign AI Fund. This strategic partnership is core to Locai's sovereign AI infrastructure strategy.
• NVIDIAcoreTechnology or IntegrationLocai Labs is a member of the NVIDIA Inception Program. The company post-trains on NVIDIA's Nemotron-3-Super-120B base model for the Jupiter-N series. Locai One hardware uses NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 GPUs.
• GooglecoreTechnology or IntegrationLocai Labs applies its post-training recipe to Google's Gemma-4 base model, creating the Jupiter-G series. Models are openly released on Hugging Face.
• Hugging FacecoreTechnology or IntegrationAll Locai models are openly released on Hugging Face including Jupiter-N-120B, Jupiter-G-8B, and Locai-L1-Large, enabling community access and open-source collaboration.
• Qwen (Alibaba)coreTechnology or IntegrationLocai-L1-Large is a 235B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts model post-trained on Qwen base, aligned with UK laws, languages, and cultural context.

Scale indicators7 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• AI21 Labs: Enterprise foundation model company offering customisable LLMs and on-prem deployment for organisations needing data control. Comparable to Locai on bespoke model training, sovereign/regulated customer focus and developer tooling (SDKs, IDE integrations).
• Mistral AI: Paris-based European sovereign LLM developer offering foundation models, customisation and on-prem/self-hosted deployments. Direct comparison to Locai on sovereign AI positioning and custom post-trained models, though Mistral is significantly larger and better capitalised.
• Aleph Alpha: German sovereign AI company focused on regulated enterprises and public-sector deployments with data residency and explainability. Highly comparable to Locai on sovereign-on-prem positioning and target verticals (government, defence, regulated industries).
• SambaNova Systems: On-prem AI hardware and full-stack platform (DataScale) for running large models inside customer environments with fixed-cost economics. Direct comparison to Locai One on the on-prem AI appliance thesis for sovereign/regulated buyers.
• Together AI: Open-source LLM platform offering fine-tuning, customisation and dedicated/GPU inference for enterprises. Comparable to Locai Platform and Model Customiser on post-training open-source bases and offering on-prem-style deployments.
• Cohere: Enterprise-focused LLM provider offering private deployments, custom models and retrieval/RAG tooling for regulated buyers. Closely comparable to Locai's enterprise field-sales motion, custom model offering and data-residency value proposition.
• H2O.ai: Enterprise AI platform offering on-prem and air-gapped deployments of customisable models for regulated industries. Comparable to Locai on sovereign deployment, vertical focus (financial services, healthcare, public sector) and bespoke model training.
• Nscale: UK-based AI infrastructure provider building sovereign compute and hosting for UK/European AI workloads. Direct comparison to Locai's UK sovereign cloud positioning and Civo partnership for sovereign AI infrastructure in the UK.

Broad incumbents

• Databricks (Mosaic AI): Data and AI platform offering custom model training, RAG and private model serving within customer-governed environments via Mosaic AI. Comparable to Locai on enterprise custom-model and RAG workflow, though part of a much broader data/analytics portfolio.
• Anthropic: Frontier AI lab offering Claude for Enterprise with security/safety focus and increasingly on-prem-style deployment options via cloud partners. A broader incumbent with overlapping regulated-enterprise value proposition though not specialising in sovereign on-prem.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/locai_labs
• GitHubgithub.com/LocaiLabs
• Facebookfacebook.com/locailabs
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/locailabs

Compliance3 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles4 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Locai Labs