What we know: Whitespace’s £10 M funding & background
- Whitespace has successfully completed a Series A funding round, raising around £10 million (≈ US $13 million) to scale its “sovereign AI” platform. (The Irish News)
- The investment comes from institutional investors including Beach Equity and White Cloud, alongside earlier backers from its pre-Series A phase. (The Irish News)
- Whitespace is based in Belfast and was founded in 2015 by engineers aiming to build UK-native AI infrastructure. Over a decade, it has evolved into one of the UK’s leading creators of “sovereign AI,” with its technology already deployed in critical, high-risk environments including defence and national security. (The Irish News)
- The company’s flagship product is an operating system called CollectiveOS — a sovereign AI operating system engineered to operate in highly secure and regulated contexts: cloud, on-premises, edge, and even fully air-gapped environments. (BusinessCloud)
Whitespace’s CEO stressed that this funding is not just about growth — it’s about enabling the UK to “trust, control and deploy safely” its own AI capabilities for sensitive systems. (UKTN)
What Whitespace will do next — scaling, product development, and strategic partnerships
With the new funding, Whitespace plans to:
- Expand its engineering, delivery and customer-success capacity at its Belfast headquarters. (The Irish News)
- Grow its leadership team and broaden expertise — a sign that the company is moving from “start-up/pioneer” phase into a full-scale operation. (The Irish News)
- Serve growing demand across defence, national security, and other “high-assurance regulated sectors” — markets where data sensitivity, security, and sovereignty are paramount. (BusinessCloud)
Further, Whitespace has formalized a strategic partnership with Defence Holdings PLC — a UK-listed software-led defence company. Under this agreement, Whitespace and Defence Holdings will co-develop sovereign AI infrastructure and mission-specific AI applications, using CollectiveOS as a foundation. (white.space)
The first AI products under this collaboration are already in development for the Ministry of Defence (UK) (MoD), though most remain operationally classified. (Investegate)
One of the early flagship efforts under this umbrella is Project Ixian: a sovereign-AI tool designed to protect against hostile information operations, disinformation, and digital threats. Project Ixian is being engineered for deployment on secure, sovereign-grade cloud infrastructure (including air-gapped systems) — built to meet stringent national security standards. (white.space)
Why this matters: Sovereign AI, national security & industry context
- Sovereignty, not just tech: The Whitespace raise and its partnerships reflect a broader UK push to maintain control over critical AI infrastructure — data, compute, models — especially for defence and national security. This reduces reliance on foreign cloud vendors or global supply chains. (BusinessCloud)
- From pilots to production: While many AI companies focus on proof-of-concept or commercial AI apps, Whitespace aims to take “sovereign-by-design” AI systems from prototypes to full deployment — in secure, high-risk environments. (syncni.com)
- Growing regulated-sector AI demand: Sectors like defence, national security, critical infrastructure, and regulated public services require high assurance: data governance, auditability, resilience, and often air-gapped or on-prem deployments. These needs align well with what Whitespace’s CollectiveOS promises. (The Irish News)
- Strategic positioning for UK and allies: Through partnerships with Defence Holdings and classified MoD programmes, followed by eventual potential export to allied defence entities, Whitespace could become a cornerstone of the UK’s long-term “sovereign AI” industrial base. (Investegate)
In short: this is more than a typical tech-startup funding round. It signals a structural shift: building trusted AI infrastructure from the ground up, with national security and sovereignty baked in.
Key Quotes from Whitespace & Its Investors
- Whitespace CEO: “This raise gives us the capacity to deliver sovereign AI capability at national scale — building technology that the UK can trust, control and deploy safely across its most critical systems.” (UKTN)
- Beach Equity: They praised Whitespace’s traction “on both sides of the Atlantic” and their “market-leading knowledge and product design,” noting it’s rare for a small business to earn such respect from major tech partners. (UKTN)
- White Cloud board: Their backing reflects confidence that agile UK-based AI firms can deliver rapid, resilient solutions for defence and regulated organisations facing “unprecedented challenges.” (UKTN)
What to Watch Next — What’s Coming
- First deployments of Project Ixian — As the first product from the Whitespace–Defence Holdings partnership, its performance and feedback will likely shape how the UK and its allies view sovereign AI for information-security / information-warfare use cases.
- Expansion beyond defence — While the current focus is on high-assurance defence / national security clients, Whitespace’s core infrastructure could eventually be applied to other regulated sectors (e.g. critical infrastructure, government, regulated enterprise) — especially where data sovereignty matters.
- Growing UK sovereign AI ecosystem — This raise may encourage more investment into UK-based AI infrastructure firms, especially as governments (both UK and allies) increasingly prioritize “sovereign-by-design” models over reliance on foreign cloud providers.
- Global implications — As geopolitical tensions and digital risk (cyber, disinformation, hybrid warfare) increase, the success of Whitespace could influence how other countries build their own sovereign AI stacks, potentially shifting global AI infrastructure towards more national or regional models.
- Here’s a breakdown — in a “case-study + commentary” style — of Whitespace’s £10 million funding raise and what it tells us about the evolving “sovereign AI” landscape in the UK / defence-tech space.
What we know: Whitespace’s £10 M funding & background
- Whitespace has successfully completed a Series A funding round, raising £10 million (≈ US $13 million) to scale its sovereign-AI platform. (The Irish News)
- The investment comes from institutional investors including Beach Equity and White Cloud, alongside earlier backers from its pre-Series A phase. (BusinessCloud)
- Whitespace is based in Belfast and was founded in 2015 by engineers aiming to build UK-native AI infrastructure. Ten years on, it has evolved into one of the UK’s leading creators of sovereign AI, with its technology already deployed in critical, high-risk environments including defence and national security. (The Irish News)
- The company’s flagship product is an operating system called CollectiveOS — a sovereign AI OS engineered to operate in highly secure and regulated contexts: cloud, on-premises, edge, and even fully air-gapped environments. (BusinessCloud)
Whitespace’s CEO stressed that this funding is not just about growth — it’s about enabling the UK to “trust, control and deploy safely” its own AI capabilities for sensitive systems. (BusinessCloud)
What Whitespace will do next — scaling, product development, and strategic partnerships
With the new funding, Whitespace plans to:
- Expand its engineering, delivery and customer-success capacity at its Belfast headquarters. (The Irish News)
- Grow its leadership team and broaden expertise — a sign that the company is moving from “start-up/pioneer” phase into a full-scale operation. (The Irish News)
- Serve growing demand across defence, national security, and other “high-assurance regulated sectors” — markets where data sensitivity, security, and sovereignty are paramount. (BusinessCloud)
Further, Whitespace has formalized a strategic partnership with Defence Holdings PLC — a UK-listed software-led defence company. Under this agreement, Whitespace and Defence Holdings will co-develop sovereign AI infrastructure and mission-specific AI applications, using CollectiveOS as a foundation. (white.space)
The first AI products under this collaboration are already in development for the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), though most remain operationally classified. (white.space)
One of the early flagship efforts under this umbrella is Project Ixian: a sovereign-AI tool designed to protect against hostile information operations, disinformation, and digital threats. Project Ixian is being engineered for deployment on secure, sovereign-grade cloud infrastructure (including air-gapped systems) — built to meet stringent national security standards. (white.space)
Why this matters: Sovereign AI, national security & industry context
- Sovereignty, not just tech: The Whitespace raise and its partnerships reflect a broader UK push to maintain control over critical AI infrastructure — data, compute, models — especially for defence and national security. This reduces reliance on foreign cloud vendors or global supply chains. (BusinessCloud)
- From pilots to production: While many AI companies focus on proof-of-concept or commercial AI apps, Whitespace aims to take “sovereign-by-design” AI systems from prototypes to full deployment — in secure, high-risk environments. (syncni.com)
- Growing regulated-sector AI demand: Sectors like defence, national security, critical infrastructure, and regulated public services require high assurance: data governance, auditability, resilience, and often air-gapped or on-prem deployments. These needs align well with what CollectiveOS promises. (BusinessCloud)
- Strategic positioning for UK and allies: Through partnerships with Defence Holdings and classified MoD programmes, followed by eventual potential export to allied defence entities, Whitespace could become a cornerstone of the UK’s long-term “sovereign AI” industrial base. (white.space)
In short: this is more than a typical tech-startup funding round. It signals a structural shift: building trusted AI infrastructure from the ground up, with national security and sovereignty baked in.
Key Quotes from Whitespace & Its Investors
- Whitespace CEO: “This raise gives us the capacity to deliver sovereign AI capability at national scale — building technology that the UK can trust, control and deploy safely across its most critical systems.” (BusinessCloud)
- Beach Equity: They praised Whitespace’s traction “on both sides of the Atlantic” and their “market-leading knowledge and product design,” noting it’s rare for a small business to earn such respect from major tech partners. (BusinessCloud)
- White Cloud board: Their backing reflects confidence that agile UK-based AI firms can deliver rapid, resilient solutions for defence and regulated organisations facing “unprecedented challenges.” (BusinessCloud)
- Jenkinson added: “We started as a small team of problem-solvers in Belfast who believed that the UK should own its own AI infrastructure. Ten years later, that belief has become reality — our capabilities are now live, and this investment takes us from pioneering to scaling.” (The Irish News)
What to Watch Next — What’s Coming
- First deployments of Project Ixian — As the first product from the Whitespace–Defence Holdings partnership, its performance and feedback will likely shape how the UK and its allies view sovereign AI for information-security / information-warfare use cases.
- Expansion beyond defence — While the current focus is on high-assurance defence / national security clients, Whitespace’s core infrastructure could eventually be applied to other regulated sectors (e.g. critical infrastructure, government, regulated enterprise) — especially where data sovereignty matters.
- Growing UK sovereign AI ecosystem — This raise may encourage more investment into UK-based AI infrastructure firms, especially as governments (both UK and allies) increasingly prioritize “sovereign-by-design” models over reliance on foreign cloud providers.
- Global implications — As geopolitical tensions and digital risk (cyber, disinformation, hybrid warfare) increase, the success of Whitespace could influence how other countries build their own sovereign AI stacks, potentially shifting global AI infrastructure towards more national or regional models.