Cosine Joins Leonardo’s SME Collaboration Programme to Accelerate Sovereign AI for UK Defence and National Security
Cosine has joined the Leonardo SME Collaboration Programme, creating a route to bring sovereign AI into secure UK defence and national security environments.
Today, Cosine is announcing that we have joined the Leonardo SME Collaboration Programme.
The programme brings together selected UK defence and security SMEs with Leonardo’s engineering expertise, understanding of customer requirements, and market access. The programme is designed to turn promising British technology into credible, deployable capability for UK defence, national security customers, and allied forces.
For Cosine, joining the programme is an important step in our work to build AI that puts control in the hands of those who deploy and depend on it.
From innovation to deployed capability
The UK has a strong base of defence technology companies. A challenge is often moving from a successful prototype or demonstration to capability that can be integrated and delivered at scale.
Leonardo created the SME Collaboration Programme with commercialisation specialist Form1 Partners to help close this gap. Rather than offering a short-term accelerator, the programme establishes focused, long-term relationships between Leonardo and a select number of SMEs. Those in the programme gain a clearer view of customer needs, support in shaping their technology around real requirements, and a route to develop and take joint capabilities to market.
Why sovereign AI matters in defence
AI can help defence and national security teams interpret complex information, strengthen cyber defence, modernise mission-critical software, and support faster, better-informed decisions.
For sensitive use cases, organisations need control over where a model runs, how it handles data, who can access it, and how the system is governed. A model that depends on foreign-controlled infrastructure or requires sensitive information to leave a trusted environment may be unusable, regardless of how capable it is.
This is the problem Cosine is built to solve.
We train AI models for organisations that need frontier capability inside secure environments. Our models and agents can operate within a customer’s chosen security perimeter, including fully disconnected and air-gapped infrastructure, giving organisations control over their models, data, and deployment.
Cosine was selected for the UK Government’s Sovereign AI programme and awarded national compute on Isambard-AI, the UK’s largest supercomputer. We are using that capability to build Lumen Sovereign, a family of frontier AI models designed for critical and highly regulated industries.
Deepening our work with Leonardo
Leonardo is already contributing to the industry coalition, helping Cosine shape Lumen Sovereign around the requirements of critical UK organisations. Joining the Leonardo programme will deepen that relationship and create a more direct path from model capability to operational need.
Through the programme, Cosine will work with Leonardo to understand upcoming defence and security requirements, shape our offer around end-user needs, and identify where sovereign AI can deliver practical improvements.
Cosine brings frontier AI research, model development, and secure deployment capability. Leonardo brings deep defence expertise, systems integration experience, and customer insight. Together, the objective is to identify problems where advanced reasoning can deliver a meaningful operational advantage, then build systems that can be trusted and deployed where needed.
Yang Li, COO & Co-Founder, Cosine
“Defence is a core focus for Cosine. Sovereign AI only means something if it can be trusted in the most demanding environments, and no single company can deliver that alone. Working with Leonardo gives us a route to put our technology in front of the people who need it, and to build capability the UK controls.”
Professor Simon Harwood, UK Strategy & Technology Director (CTO), Leonardo
"Sovereignty in AI is about assurance as much as ownership. Lumen Sovereign shows how primes and SMEs can build that assurance together. Through the Leonardo Collaboration Programme, Leonardo is helping innovators like Cosine move from breakthrough to deployable defence capability faster, so the UK fields frontier AI on its own terms."
What comes next
Our teams will now focus on aligning Cosine’s technology with priority defence and security requirements, moving sovereign AI from technical capability to practical deployment.
Learn more about Cosine’s work and Leonardo’s SME Collaboration Programme.