UK AI-powered asset management firm Keen AI and the National Grid have been awarded £355,985 ($477k) in Alpha-phase funding from Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund to develop a shared AI model for inspecting electricity network assets across the UK.

The project, dubbed Foundational Shared Model Operations (FoSMo), aims to standardize how network operators collect and analyze visual data from physical infrastructure such as pylons, cables, and insulators.

The funding will support the companies in their alpha phase deployment, which will bring together all three of the UK’s electricity transmission operators, National Grid, SP Energy Networks, and SSEN Transmission, alongside distribution operators UK Power Networks and SP Electricity North West.

The companies claim that the system will anonymize data across the industry to train a single model that any participating operator can fine-tune for its own network. Keen AI will develop, maintain, and host the models.

“By pooling data and expertise, the model has the potential to support our upgrades of the grid while also making considerable cost savings across the industry,” said Matthew Ward, innovation engineer at National Grid Electricity Transmission.

The companies claim that if the system were adopted across all participating operators, it could save the industry around £22.6 million ($30.33m) over five years from 2027.

“When every major network operator shares what they know about their assets, we end up with something more robust than any of them could build alone,” said Amjad Karim, CEO and founder of Keen AI. “That’s how the UK can future-proof a grid that’s about to double in size.”

The model is similar to that of Google-backed Tapestry within the US market. The company partnered with US Regional Transmission Organization PJM Interconnection last April to deploy its agentic AI system to streamline the RTO’s interconnection process.

The firm completed its first trial of the system earlier this month.