Faculty

London applied-AI company that builds AI software and works on real decisions for the NHS, defence and industry. Accenture agreed to acquire it in January 2026.

About Faculty

Faculty is a London-based applied AI company. Rather than researching AI for its own sake, it helps organisations use AI to make better decisions: predicting demand, planning operations, spotting risks and improving services. Its software platform, called Frontier, brings these tools together, and its teams work alongside clients on the problem. The company says it has worked with hundreds of organisations across energy, financial services, defence, health and care and the public sector.

Faculty was founded in 2014 by Marc Warner, Angie Ma and Andrew Brookes. It began as a fellowship scheme, then called the Advanced Skills Initiative, that helped PhD graduates and researchers retrain for careers in commercial data science, and it was renamed Faculty in 2019. Marc Warner, the chief executive, trained as a physicist and was a Marie Curie Fellow at Harvard. The Fellowship programme still runs and Faculty says it has more than 425 alumni. Its address is on Old Street in London.

Faculty says its sole purpose is to make AI useful to the world. It describes itself as focused only on AI and not chasing the latest hype, and puts AI ethics and safety at the centre of its work.

Some of its projects have been visible to the public. During the Covid-19 pandemic it worked with the NHS on a Covid early warning system and on predicting hospital demand. It has worked on projects for the Ministry of Defence and across the private sector, including energy and finance. Press coverage has also raised questions about some of its government contracts, which Faculty disputes. In January 2026 Faculty announced that Accenture had agreed to acquire it; the announcement does not say whether the deal has closed.

The Faculty Fellowship is a good example of a route into AI that doesn't start with a computer science degree, because it retrains academics from fields such as physics, maths and biology. Its pages do not set out other early-careers schemes, so students should check the careers page for current roles.

What they do

• {'desc': "Faculty's platform for decision-making, simulation and optimisation.", 'title': 'Frontier'}
• {'desc': 'Teams that work with organisations to build and use AI on real problems.', 'title': 'Applied AI projects'}
• {'desc': 'Ethics and safety at the centre of how it builds and uses AI.', 'title': 'AI ethics and safety'}
• {'desc': 'A programme that retrains academics for careers in commercial data science.', 'title': 'Faculty Fellowship'}

Key facts

• Founded: 2014
• Headquarters: Old Street, London, UK
• Founders: Marc Warner, Angie Ma and Andrew Brookes
• Fellowship alumni: more than 425 (company figure)
• Accenture announced an agreement to acquire Faculty on 6 January 2026

Website: faculty.ai