AMD has signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Oxford to support the British Open-ended Learning and Discovery Lab (BOLD), a UK-based initiative focused on fundamental AI research. Under the agreement, AMD intends to provide up to £5 million in computing resources to help researchers explore alternative approaches to machine learning.
The BOLD lab is led by Oxford and includes researchers from University College London and Imperial College London. The collaboration will focus on methods that move beyond current machine learning techniques, including alternative model training approaches that do not rely on backpropagation, multi-agent discovery systems, and adaptive physical AI technologies.
What the partnership includes
AMD will deliver computing resources through a combination of AMD-managed infrastructure, cloud service providers, public-sector partnerships, and hardware contributions. The company also plans to work with BOLD researchers on optimizing AI workloads using its open software ecosystem, including the ROCm platform.
The research will use open-source technologies in line with BOLD's commitment to open scientific research. Researchers will be supported in publishing software, benchmarks, and evaluation tools, while contributing performance improvements back to the open-source community.
Work is expected to follow a phased approach. Initial efforts will focus on exploratory research, with later stages concentrating on the most promising areas identified during early experiments.
What researchers say
Associate Professor Jakob Foerster from Oxford's Department of Engineering Science said: "BOLD aims to advance a more open, efficient and human-centred path for AI through collaboration between academia and industry. Working with AMD, the University of Oxford would combine world-leading research with computing technology to test ideas, learn quickly and translate breakthroughs into applications."
Thomas Zacharia, Senior Vice President of Global Public Sector and Strategic Partnerships at AMD, said: "By expanding access to compute and supporting open academic research, our aim would be to help BOLD researchers accelerate experimentation and contribute to the U.K.'s leadership in AI innovation and scientific discovery."
The agreement builds on AMD's existing UK university collaborations, including work with the University of Cambridge on the Zenith supercomputer and the Sovereign AI Innovation Lab, as well as ongoing AI research with Imperial College London.
For research scientists working in AI development, this partnership signals growing industry investment in fundamental research that does not depend on scaling existing methods. The focus on alternative training techniques and open-source tools makes this lab a good fit for professionals exploring AI for Science & Research through open collaboration between academia and industry.
Why this matters for research scientists
For BOLD-level researchers and the AI Learning Path for Research Scientists, this collaboration provides access to enterprise computing infrastructure without the vendor lock-in that often comes with proprietary AI hardware. The focus on open-source software and public benchmarks means findings can be validated and built upon by the broader scientific community. Researchers who rely on transparent, reproducible AI work will benefit from the alternative training methods and multi-agent systems the partnership aims to investigate.
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