---
title: "Cardiff AI start-up backed by Welsh Government funding - “AI is going to become fundamental to how organisations operate” — Aventail™ Newsroom"
url: https://aventail.co.uk/newsroom/insider-media-cardiff-ai-start-up-welsh-government-funding
description: "Insider Media reports on Welsh Government funding for Aventail™’s AI security and governance technology through the SMART Flexible Innovation Support programme."
lang: en-GB
---

Skip to content

Locai is now Aventail™ Learn about the rebrand: https://aventail.co.uk/newsroom/locai-rebrands-as-aventail

Back to Newsroom (https://aventail.co.uk/newsroom)

Original article: 2 November 2026 In the press

# Cardiff AI start-up backed by Welsh Government funding - “AI is going to become fundamental to how organisations operate”

Insider Media reports on Welsh Government funding for Aventail™ ’s AI security and governance technology through the SMART Flexible Innovation Support programme.

Ben Butler reports for Insider Media, published on 2 November 2026.

The report covers Welsh Government support for Aventail ™ ’s AI routing and orchestration development through SMART Flexible Innovation Support. It discusses the company’s work on data control and AI governance, with comments from CEO Joseph Ward.

Read original article on Insider Media: https://www.insidermedia.com/news/wales/cardiff-ai-start-up-backed-by-welsh-government-funding-ai-is-going-to-become-fundamental-to-how-organisations-operate

We use optional cookies and tracking to identify visiting companies, load our contact form, measure Google Ads download clicks and understand use of our private AI page with PostHog. Cookie policy (https://aventail.co.uk/cookies)

## Structured data

```json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@type": "Organization",
      "@id": "https://aventail.co.uk/#organization",
      "name": "Aventail",
      "alternateName": "Locai",
      "legalName": "Loc.ai Ltd",
      "description": "Aventail, formerly Locai, was founded in 2026 and is a graduate of Google AI First. It gives enterprises the full AI stack to adopt AI securely: a built-in inference engine, deployment of supported models across approved hardware, on-device classification and policy-based routing between those machines and approved external AI providers, central management and an employee workspace. Organisations use Aventail to put approved information to work while controlling where inference requests run.",
      "url": "https://aventail.co.uk/",
      "logo": "https://aventail.co.uk/apple-touch-icon.png",
      "email": "hello@aventail.co.uk"
    },
    {
      "@type": "Article",
      "@id": "https://aventail.co.uk/newsroom/insider-media-cardiff-ai-start-up-welsh-government-funding#page",
      "url": "https://aventail.co.uk/newsroom/insider-media-cardiff-ai-start-up-welsh-government-funding",
      "name": "Cardiff AI start-up backed by Welsh Government funding - “AI is going to become fundamental to how organisations operate”",
      "description": "Insider Media reports on Welsh Government funding for Aventail™’s AI security and governance technology through the SMART Flexible Innovation Support programme.",
      "publisher": {
        "@id": "https://aventail.co.uk/#organization"
      },
      "headline": "Cardiff AI start-up backed by Welsh Government funding - “AI is going to become fundamental to how organisations operate”",
      "datePublished": "2026-11-02T11:26:22.435409+00:00",
      "dateCreated": "2026-11-02T11:22:01.757144+00:00",
      "dateModified": "2026-11-02T11:26:22.435409+00:00",
      "image": "https://aventail-ai-platform.lovable.app/images/share/newsroom/insider-media-cardiff-ai-start-up-welsh-government-funding-v1.jpg",
      "author": {
        "@id": "https://aventail.co.uk/#organization"
      }
    }
  ]
}
```