Two companies backed by the Government's AI Sovereign Fund were given seed investment by the Managing Partner’s previous Venture Capital firm
The overlap raises questions about how the government defines “sovereign” AI, and how it manages potential conflicts when investing public money
Welcome back to The Eye—our weekly guide to the shifting relationship between Big Tech and the state.
This week: We uncover that companies backed by the government’s £500m Sovereign AI Fund previously received investment from a venture capital firm where the fund’s managing partner worked.
The Eye can reveal that two companies now listed in the government’s £500m Sovereign AI Fund portfolio previously received seed funding from a venture capital firm where the Fund’s managing partner, Suzanne Ashman, worked as a general partner for a decade. Ashman is the wife of Euan Blair, former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s son and was appointed to run the Sovereign AI Fund in May 2026.
The companies in question are CuspAI and Olix. Between February 2016 and February 2026, Ashman worked at LocalGlobe, a pre-seed and seed-stage investment firm specialising in the technology sector. LocalGlobe’s published investment history records its seed investments in both companies while Ashman was at the firm.
No wrongdoing is implied on the parts of Ashman, CuspAI, Olix, or LocalGlobe.
In a written question to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology by Green MP Siân Berry in May 2026, she asked about potential conflicts of interest in relation to the proposed appointment of Ashman to a lead position at the Sovereign AI Fund, mentioning her previous roles in venture capital and her personal connections, and what mitigation measures are being put in place.’
In response, AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said at the time that ‘the Managing Partner is recused from decisions which may cross with any real or perceived conflicts in relation to personal or financial interests’, and that ‘these mitigations were discussed in detail and agreed with the DSIT Permanent Secretary’.
Despite this question being raised in May, the portfolio page regarding Mrs Ashman was only published in October, and similarly states that ‘Suzanne is recused from decisions which may cross with any real or perceived conflicts in relation to her personal or financial interests. As common practice the mitigations were discussed in detail and agreed with the Permanent Secretary.’
In response to inquiries made by the Citizens regarding whether or not Ashman retains any economic interest in prior funds or companies she has worked for, and how these interests are handled by the department, DBIST did not respond to a request for comment.
The additions to the Sovereign AI Fund’s direct equity investments were revealed as part of a response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request sent by the Citizens to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST), and now publicly announced on the Fund’s website.
The Department told the Citizens that the Fund has also ‘made further investments which have yet to be announced’, but that ‘their identity, value and terms are commercially sensitive, and this information is being withheld’.
It added that further companies considered under both the £500m scheme and the government’s £100m sovereign competition AI scheme are also considered commercially sensitive information. The department disclosed that three awards have been issued under the £9m pilot competition, but that the names and individual award values are, again, currently withheld.
Britain’s sovereign AI fund has deep ties to US tech
In July 2026 it was reported that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the sovereign AI fund had been among those who had raised $450m (£330m) invested into Cambridge-based artificial intelligence startup CuspAI, giving the two-year-old business a valuation of $2.6bn.
London-based chipmaking startup Olix received backing from the government’s AI scheme, and is now reportedly valued at $3.3bn (£2.45bn). The company is run by James Dacombe, a high-school drop out described in Forbes as ‘Europe’s youngest self-made billionaire’. Dacombe was also a recipient of the Thiel Fellowship, a program backed by US Trump-aligned billionaire Peter Thiel to encourage young entrepreneurs to ‘drop out’ and focus on building tech projects full time.
The Citizens can also reveal that another company, not mentioned in previous FOI responses relating to the direct equity investments listed as part of the £500m AI scheme, but now featured on the Sovereign AI portfolio, is Augur, a ‘next gen perception engine that maximises operational capability by leveraging existing camera infrastructure’.
Augur’s platform integrates with existing camera technology and sensors deployed in transport hubs, energy infrastructure, stadiums, and labs using AI and machine learning to detect ‘abnormal behaviours, and unseen patterns’, turning ‘existing camera infrastructure into a real-time intelligence network’.
Augur CEO and founder is Harry Mead, who co-founded the firm with two former Palantir engineers. Imran Lone, Augur’s CTO, and Stefan Kopieczek, its head of engineering, join Mead in creating Augur’s platform to track behavioural and movement patterns through sensors, as opposed to relying on facial recognition technology.
The Fund’s investments in Olix and CuspAI, which have both received US capital at seed level, come amid wider questions about the Fund’s definition of sovereignty. Previous FOI disclosures found that four of nine companies known at that time to have received direct equity investment or compute offers from the Fund were ultimately US-owned, with their top-level companies headquartered in the United States.
The overlap is documented, but two questions remain unanswered: whether Ashman was recused from the Fund’s decisions on Olix and CuspAI, and how investments involving overseas capital or ownership fit the government’s definition of “sovereign” AI. The public record raises those questions; it does not establish wrongdoing or that the safeguards failed.
The questions now sit within the broader expansion of public support for AI. The government has announced an additional £60 million for the Sovereign AI Fund and £60m into its R&D Procurement Scheme to support work on health and social care. It has also announced £165 million for a National Biosecurity Initiative. This initiative is due to receive up to £200 million in model and compute credits from OpenAI and Anthropic. This is relevant to the broader question of what ‘sovereign’ means when public capability relies, in part, on dependency on US models.
About The Eye: In an era where Silicon Valley is rewriting the rules of governance and unaccountable tech companies are capturing our public services from the inside out, The Eye exists to follow the power, connect the dots and reveal how technology is reshaping our state.
