Locai Labs has unveiled Locai, a new British-built AI assistant powered by its own foundational model and pioneering a sustainable, community-driven approach to AI development.
Locai Labs has announced the launch of Locai, a general AI assistant powered by Locai L1-Large, the UK’s first foundational large language model (LLM), marking a watershed moment for British technology and the nation’s role in the global AI race.
Locai Labs pitches as the UK’s independent foundational AI company, dedicated to creating collaborative, community driven technology that empowers humanity rather than replacing it.
Based in London, the company combines UK scientific expertise with global ambition.
For years, the development of advanced AI has been dominated by the US and China, whose tech giants have benefited from vast data centre infrastructure and investment. Britain, by contrast, has faced a chronic shortage of domestic computing power.
Now Locai, an AI assistant designed and built in the UK and backed by former science minister Lord Drayson, is taking on global rivals – including GPT-5, Claude, DeepSeek and Gemini – on the key measure of conversational ability and human preference while delivering top tier results across mathematics, scientific reasoning and instruction-following benchmarks.
Locai L1-Large surpasses GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen and Mistral to claim the number one rank on Arena Hard v2, the industry’s leading benchmark for conversational ability and human preference, while delivering top-tier results across mathematics, scientific reasoning and instruction-following benchmarks.
Founders James and George Drayson have developed a new vision for ‘community AI’ that combines self-learning technology with a decentralised, community-powered architecture to create high-performance AI that can be scaled sustainably.
Forget-Me-Not: AI that teaches itself
George Drayson has invented a technology called ‘Forget-Me-Not’ that solves one of AI’s most persistent challenges: catastrophic forgetting – the tendency for models to lose previously learned knowledge when trained on new information.
The unique innovation means Locai Labs’ AI models can evolve independently without armies of human trainers or access to huge datasets. Locai L1-Large teaches itself and constantly improves without human input, generating its own training data and never forgetting what it has learned.
The breakthrough means faster progress and lower costs in model post-training, while preserving accuracy and safety. More than a technical milestone, this UK innovation is a strategic necessity: true sovereignty in AI is now essential for Britain to remain competitive in the world’s fastest-growing technology sector.
Tackling Britain’s data centre deficit
Traditional AI models demand enormous, energy-hungry data centres – an approach that is both costly and environmentally damaging.
Locai Labs has taken a different path. As user numbers grow, Locai will scale through a community-driven blockchain network, allowing users themselves to contribute computing resources and shape the development of the model in future.
This crowdsourced model means Britain will be able to compete in AI by offering a sustainable and decentralised alternative that is unique on the world stage.
James Drayson, CEO of Locai Labs, said: “Britain doesn’t need to outspend the world to lead in AI – we need to outthink it, because we won’t win the AI race simply by building bigger data centres.
“Our approach has created an AI that has taught itself to be safer, more conversational and more intelligent, and that will scale sustainably through the power of its users.
“It’s not just a new model, it’s a new way forward for AI and for the UK and gives consumers and organisations access to a British-built, sovereign, high performance AI without the usual trade offs.”
George Drayson, Chief AI Officer of Locai Labs, said: “Our novel method, Forget-Me-Not, prevents catastrophic forgetting by instructing the model to create its own synthetic training data; improving helpfulness, truthfulness and safety in the process.”
Lord Drayson, Chairman of Locai Labs, said: “This is a defining moment for British technology. By combining ingenuity with sustainability, we’ve created an AI model that not only competes globally but sets a new standard for how artificial intelligence should be built – responsibly, sustainably and in partnership with its users.”
Locai – Key features
· Independent and British-built: designed and developed in the UK.
· Trained in the UK on computers powered by 100% renewable energy.
· Forget-Me-Not: patent-pending AI self-improvement technology. Locai L1-Large learns without human input, avoids catastrophic forgetting.
· World-class performance: outperforms leading models on conversational ability and human preference.
· Energy-efficient and scalable: growth to be powered by blockchain and distributed computing capacity
· “Mixture of experts” architecture: enables community distributed network.
· Culturally aligned: open-source, and proficient in over 200 languages from Scots Gaelic to Swahili.
Locai Labs: Who’s who
James Drayson
James Drayson is a technology entrepreneur with a background in biology and innovation management. He holds degrees from Imperial College Business School and UCLA and has developed machine learning tools for fraud detection.
James is recognised for his commitment to ethical AI and has worked on projects that advance responsible technology, blending scientific expertise with entrepreneurial drive.
George Drayson
George Drayson is an AI researcher specialising in machine learning and natural language processing. He is pursuing a PhD at University College London, following an engineering degree from the University of Oxford.
George has published research on advanced AI topics and has contributed to projects that bridge academic innovation with practical applications, establishing himself as a promising figure in the field of artificial intelligence.
Paul Drayson
Paul Drayson is a British entrepreneur, scientist, and former government minister. He founded PowderJect Pharmaceuticals, which became a leader in vaccine technology, and later served as Minister for Science and Innovation, helping shape UK science policy.
With a PhD in robotics and a passion for motorsport, Paul has combined his interests in technology and engineering throughout his career, earning recognition for his contributions to both industry and public service.
