A company that has worked closely with the UK government on artificial intelligence safety, the NHS and education is also developing AI for military drones. The consultancy Faculty AI has "experience developing and deploying AI models on to UAVs", or unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a defence industry partner company. Faculty has emerged as one of the most active companies selling AI services in the UK. Unlike the likes of OpenAI, Deepmind or Anthropic, it does not develop models itself, instead focusing on reselling models, notably from OpenAI, and consulting on their use in government and industry. Faculty gained particular prominence in the UK after working on data analysis for the Vote Leave campaign before the Brexit vote.

Facebook is set to acquire London-based start-up Bloomsbury AI for up to $30 million (£23 million), according to a TechCrunch report. Founded in 2015, Bloomsbury AI specialises in natural language processing (NLP) technology, and has developed an AI called "Cape," which can read text documents and answer questions about their contents. The company's stated goal is for their AI to "[eventually] be able to answer any question that requires reading better than a human." Citing anonymous sources, TechCrunch claims that Facebook plans to use Bloomsbury AI's team and tech to work on combatting fake news, as well as other content issues. It also said Facebook is paying between $23 million and $30 million to acquire the company, and that a mixture of cash and stock will change hands. Bloomsbury's investors include the VC firm Fly Ventures, Seedcamp, IQ Capital, UCL Technology Fund, and the UK taxpayer-backed London Co-Investment fund.

Business Secretary Greg Clark and Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Matt Hancock (second left) talk with Alistair Cohen (left) and Brent Hoberman, Chairman of the Founders Factory (right), as they meet with artificial intelligence companies at Northcliffe House in Kensington, London as part of the launch for the Artificial Intelligence Sector Deal. Britain wants you to know that even as it stumbles towards Brexit, it's racing ahead on one of the most important technological innovations of our time - artificial intelligence. The U.K. government announced Thursday that it had put together "an AI deal worth more than £1 billion" that includes public and private funding. The money is going towards research and grants, with around £145 million from two foreign venture capital firms going into British, emerging-tech startups. It comes a couple of weeks after France announced its own commitment to AI.

British AI talent is about to be given a boost after Founders Factory, a company specialising in growing startups, announced today that it will receive a "multimillion pound" investment from a top Chinese private equity firm. CSC Group is one of China's largest private equity firms, specialises in tech investment, and has previously pumped 400m into AngelList, an US startup accelerator. Now, the firm is turning its attention to the UK. CSC has agreed to a five-year deal with Founders Factory to invest in and scale five AI startups and co-create two new companies every year. "The partnership will build a bridge between AI talent in Europe and China; giving Founders Factory startups access to the Chinese market and Chinese talent the opportunity to enter the European tech ecosystem," Founders Factory said.

British AI startup, Weave.ai, is the latest company rumoured to be snatched up by a US tech firm in Silicon Valley, according to the Financial Times. Weave.ai was founded last year and has four AI engineers working in North Greenwich. The team are developing WeaveOS, an "AI-first" operating system (OS) for mobile phones. Co-founder and CEO of Weave.ai, Rodolfo Rosini, believes artificial intelligence will dominate computing in the future.

Silicon Valley giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are investing more of their time and resources into artificial intelligence (AI) research in the hope that it will improve their existing products and lead to new ones. But they're far from the only ones aiming to create machines that can learn and think for themselves. A new generation of technology startups in Britain are focusing their efforts on developing products and services that are underpinned by AI, which has the potential to change the way we live our lives. Unfortunately, it also has the potential to end the human race if you listen to what billionaires like Elon Musk and intellects like Stephen Hawking have to say. Here are 10 of the most interesting British AI startups to watch out for in 2016.